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Abstract
This paper examines the complex and evolving relationship between science and the military in the development of listening technologies by British, French and German combatants during the First World War to combat increasingly effective ballistics and artillery on the Western Front. Land-based combat changed from the visual to the aural with an increasing selection of audio-based surveillance technologies being made available, notably sound-ranging, in part to combat the physical limitations of the human ear in the battlefield space. The article concludes by analyzing how post-war physics responded to these developments in sound-based battlefield technologies.
Acknowledgements
This article is based in part on an earlier study, Schirrmachers, “Von der Geschossbahn zum Atomorbital?” I thank the Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, for the permission to publish some material in an amended form. I have benefited from discussions following presentations of various stages of this work with audiences in Berlin, Oxford and Jerusalem and would like to thank for criticism, advice and inspiration in particular David Aubin, David Bloor, Michel Eckert, David Edgerton, Graeme Gooday, Dieter Hoffmann, Jeffrey A. Johnson, Shaul Katzir, Roy MacLeod and Axel Volmar.
Notes
1. Order intercepted by the British reprinted in Bragg et al., Artillery Survey, 38. Both Hartcup, War of Invention, 75ff., and van der Kloot, “Lawrence Bragg’s Role,” 280, leave out the word ‘alone’ in their quotes, which implies the misinterpretation as if German troops very prohibited from firing during silence completely.
2. Chasseaud, “Field Survey,” 120.
3. Concerning comparative perspectives see Johnson and MacLeod, “War Work”; Siegmund-Schultze, “Military Work in Mathematics” and Eckert, “Theoretische Physiker in Kriegsprojekten.”
4. On the state of historical research – besides the “Chemist’s War” – cp. Aubin and Bret, “Le Sabre et l’éprouvette”; Trischler, “Räumlichkeit des Krieges”; Mehrtens, “Mathematics and War”; Mendelsohn et al., Science, Technology and the Military; Hartcup, The War of Invention; Pattison, “Scientists, Inventors and the Military”; and Cardwell, “Science and First World War.” For a wider perspective see also Trischler and Weinberger, “Engineering Europe,” 49–83; from a contemporary perspective see Schmidt, Deutsche Naturwissenschaft; the state of ballistics, however, is only sketched up the the outbreak of First World War, see ibid., 233.
5. Johnson and MacLeod, “War work,” 169.
6. On communication technologies and in particular on the Fullerphone cp. Gooday, “Combative Patenting.”
7. Hartcup, The War of Invention, 78ff.
8. Only passive sound-ranging will be discussed here; the development of technologies called “Sonar” or “ASDIC” constituted further important examples at the end of the First World War. See Hackmann, “Sonar Research and Naval Warfare”; Zimmerman, “Paul Langevin” and Bensaude-Vincent, Langevin, ch. V.
9. Rasmussen, “Mobiliser, remobiliser, démobiliser.” See also Schirrmacher “Von der Geschossbahn zum Atomorbital?"
10. Charbonnier, Balistique extérieure rationelle. On the commission in general see Patard, Historique de la Commission. Aubin and Goldstein, The War of Guns and Mathematics.
11. Aubin, “The War of Guns and Mathematics,” also at greater length Aubin and Goldstein, The War of Guns and Mathematics – The question to which extent this were genuinely novel methods or rather new calculation methods based on the usual theoretical framework or even only refinements of old methods cannot fully be discussed here, as it would require a more thorough technical discussion in the mathematical developments. Pure mathematicians in France like Jacques Hadamard or Henri Lebesgue tended to see only refinements. Concerning the French Garnier-Haag-Marcus method and its accuracy in comparison to other methods, see Molitz and Strobel, Äußere Ballistik, 265–268, 299ff.
12. See Barrow-Green, “Cambridge Mathematicians.” On father and son Hartree cf. Froese Fischer, Douglas Rayner Hartree.
13. Darwin, “Douglas Rayner Hartree,” 105. Cf. Moulton, New Methods in Exterior Ballistics.
14. Hartree, “Ballistic Calculations.” Similar advances were obtained in the US around 1918, where Forest R. Moulton at the Aberdeen Proving Ground (est. 1918), and Gilbert A. Bliss and Oswald Veblen worked on ballistics. See Siegmund-Schulze, “Military Work in Mathematics,” 40, 64, and Moulton, New Methods, 2, 134ff.
15. Barrow-Green, “Cambridge Mathematicians Responses.” Judkins in this volume.
16. Hill, Theory and Use of Anti-aircraft Sound Locators.
17. Varcoe, “Scientists, Government and Organized Research.”
18. Interestingly, the DSIR was at least in part founded in order to counter the apparently so successful war research of some Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, first of all Haber’s Institute for physical chemistry, which was expanded and militarized to great extent. Still a coordinated effort to use institutional resources was only made in Germany with the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Stiftung für kriegstechnische Wissenschaften (Kaiser Wilhelm Foundation for war-specific sciences), cp. Maier, Forschung als Waffe, vol. 1, 138ff.
19. Ibid. Rasch, “Wissenschaft und Militär,” 77ff. On the KWI für Physik cf. Castagnetti and Goenner, Einstein and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute; quote from letter of Arnold Sommerfeld to David Hilbert, 13 March 1917, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen (SUB), Cod. Ms. D. Hilbert 379 A.
20. On the war projects of the Sommerfeld school cp. Eckert, Die Atomphysiker, 62–70, and the editors’ comments in Sommerfeld, Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel, Bd. 1, 445–455.
21. Cranz, Lehrbuch der Ballistik, Bd. 1, here 2nd ed., 129ff.
22. Wilhelm Lenz to Arnold Sommerfeld, 28.1.1916, Archives Deutsches Museum, Munich, Sommerfeld Papers 89/059.
23. Ladenburg and von Angerer, Ausbreitung des Schalles.
24. Walther Nernst to Arnold Sommerfeld, 2.3.1917, Archives Deutsches Museum, Munich, HS 1977-28/A, 241.
25. Arnold Sommerfeld to David Hilbert, 13 March 1917, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen (SUB), Cod. Ms. D. Hilbert 379 A.
26. Walther Nernst to Arnold Sommerfeld, 14 Feb1918, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz [SBPK], Autogr. I/284. Concerning Nernst’s personal circumstances – both of his sons had been killed by artillery attacks during the war – cp. Mendelssohn, Walther Nernst, 120.
27. Regarding the development of Minenwerfer and its specific problems see entry “Minenwerfer” in: Lueger, Lexikon der gesamten Technik, vol. 10, 462.
28. Schmidt, Deutsche Naturwissenschaft, Technik und Erfindung im Weltkriege, 250ff., mentions a new firing method with ‘exact tables, which were set up according to ballistic theory,’ whereas, however, ‘each new shot (…) had to be more or less been a matter of feeling. The firing with anti-aircraft guns appears to require an innate talent, which can be neither be replaced by instruments nor by tables.’
29. Cranz, Lehrbuch der Ballistik, 1925, 5th ed., 358, cited: Sommerfeld, Briefwechsel, 451ff.
30. A rather good account on historical research is available on sound-ranging activities except Germany: MacLeod, “Sight and Sound on the Western Front”; on the British: Palazzo, “The British Army’s Counter-battery Staff Office”; Chasseaud, “Field Survey in the Salient”; on the US: Kevles, “Flash and Sound”; on France: Schiavon, Itinéraires de la précision. For a detailed source including comparison between Britain, France and Germany (from a British perspective), see Report on Survey on the Western Front.
31. Kloot, “Lawrence Bragg’s Role.”
32. Bragg et al., Artillery Survey in the First World War and Groom, A Storm in Flanders, 165.
33. Hartcup, War of Invention. On the German beginnings in fall 1914 see Froben, Aufklärende Artillerie, 24–27.
34. Recollections by Lucien Bulls, quoted in Bragg et al., Artillery Survey in the First World War, 33; qoute from Report on Survey on Western Front, 193. For the French methods see MacLeod, “Sight and Sound on the Western Front,” 35ff.
35. Kreisler, Four Weeks in the Trenches, 28ff. See also Encke, Augenblicke der Gefahr.
36. Zenneck, Erinnerungen eines Physikers, 297ff. On Zenneck’s method see Ladenburg and von Angerer, “Experimentelle Beiträge zu Ausbreitung des Schalles,” 319ff. On Fredenhagen: Klotz, Das Württembergische Reserve-Feldartillerie-Regiment and Eckert, “Die Kartographie im Kriege.”
37. William Lawrence Bragg in Bragg et al., Artillery Survey in the First World War, 31. A critical view on claims of backwardness was presented by David Edgerton in his paper “The Sciences and the Great War: Myths and Histories,” presented at the one-day conference ‘Physics and the Great War’ at St. Cross College Oxford on 13 June 2015.
38. Ibid, 35, in contrast to Report on Survey on Western Front, 107.
39. MacLeod, “Sight and Sound on the Western Front,” 37ff.
40. Compare, for example, the notes “Untersuchungen über die Ausbreitung von Schallstrahlen für das Schallmeßverfahren d[er] Artillerie-Prüfungs-Kommission Berlin 1914–1918,” Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin, Max Born Papers 1268, or the records on the Seminar für experimentelle Psychologie der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin, Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin, I. HA, Rep. 76 Va, Sekt. 2, Tit. X, Nr. 150. New insights into the technical details and the military support of sound-ranging technologies suggested by German physicists will appear in Wittje, The Age of Electroacoustics, a forthcoming book on the history of electro-acoustics, see also Wittje, “The Electrical Imagination.”
41. Reid, Courant in Göttingen and New York, 54ff., 61. On further activities see “Interview of Richard Courant by Thomas S. Kuhn and Marc Kac on May 9, 1962,” Niels Bohr Library and Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD, http://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4562 (last accessed 1 August 2016), Transkript, 10.
42. Born, My Life, 169 and Froben, Aufklärende Artillerie, 22ff.
43. Born, “H. Herkner”; Born, My Life, 171 and MacLeod, “Sight and Sound on the Western Front,” 40.
44. A drawing of the directional listening device of Hornbostel can be found in: Froben, Aufklärende Artillerie, 25, and a description of its practical use is provided by Bochow, Schallmeßtrupp 51, 61.
45. Chasseaud, “The Strange Failure of German Sound-ranging” and MacLeod, “Sight and Sound on the Western Front,” 42.
46. Born, My Life, 171.
47. Ibid.
48. MacLeod, “Sight and Sound on the Western Front.”
49. Ibid., 43.
50. For an in-depth discussion see Ash, Gestalt Psychology, 52–60 on the controversy between Helmholtz and Ewald Heering, and 187–200 on the use of Gestalt psychologists in the First World War, cp. on this also Hoffmann, “Wissenschaft und Militär.”
51. Ibid., 43ff.
52. Born, My Life, 173. On the employment of oscilloscopes “in few specimens” at the German front in late 1917 see Froben, Aufklärende Artillerie, 27, on the use of stop watches see Bochow, Schallmeßtrupp 51.
53. Eckert, “Die Kartographie im Kriege.”
54. Ibid.
55. Bloor, “Whatever Happened to ‘Social Constructiveness’?” 198.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid.
58. For a photo collection of listening devices see e.g. Hunke, Luftgefahr und Luftschutz.
59. Cf. Trischler et al., “Beyond Weimar Culture.”
60. For a detailed discussion cf. Hoffmann, “Wissenschaft und Militär,” 263.
61. Ibid., 277.
62. Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918, 292, quoted from Rasch, “Wissenschaft und Militär,” 108 fn. 6.
63. Born, My Life, 168.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid, 170.
66. ‘I am very sad that I have to stand by and have no time to get into it. My military duties preoccupy me almost completely.’ Max Born to David Hilbert, 23 November 1915, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, Cod. Ms. D. Hilbert 40 A/11; ‘Born has just been promoted from non-commissioned officer [Unteroffizier] to the rank of a captain [Hauptmann] after he had almost worked himself to death in a subaltern position for the fatherland.’ Alfred Landé to David Hilbert, 31 October 1916, idid., 207/3; ‘There is almost no time left for scientific work, although I have a lot of promising ideas in my head.’ Max Born to David Hilbert, 22 February 1917, ibid., 40 A/14).
67. ‘The rush in the A.P.K. began to subside and we had hours of leisure which we first used to squander with chatting, but after a while we began to discuss scientific questions and even to work them out. At that time Madelung used to sit opposite me at a big desk with many drawers. Each of us emptied a drawer of all military papers and filled it with scientific books and notes. We were both interested in crystals and began a kind of collaboration.’ Born, My Life, 181. Cp. also Richard Courant: ‘But he [Born] had a lot of time to do physics. I saw him.’ “Interview of Richard Courant,” 10. Among the publications of Max Born, Erwin Madelung, Alfred Landé and others there is a number of papers that can be confirmed to have been written at least in part during the duties at the Artillerie-Prüfungs-Kommission.
68. Born, My Life, 170.
69. Max von Laue to Kuratorium der Universität Frankfurt, 10 Dezember 1918, Universitätsarchiv Frankfurt am Main, Personalhauptakte Born.
70. Cf. Castagnetti and Goenner, “Albert Einstein as Pacifist,” 325–386; Lelong and Soubiran, “Langevin, Brillouin et la marine de guerre. Une pratique en contradiction,” 49ff. and Barrow-Green, “Planes and Pacifism.”
71. Born, “H. Herkner,” 180.
72. For a wider perspective cp. Edgerton, Warfare State.
73. This has been well discussed for World War II with regard to the military-industrial complex. Iconic examples are the microwave and particle physics, which not only extended atomic bomb science but also stuck to funding from military sources. Cf. Leslie, The Cold War and American Science.
74. Encke, Augenblicke der Gefahr, 182ff. and Waetzmann, Schule des Horchens.
75. Volmar, “In Storms of Steel,” 236.
76. Hoffmann, “Wissenschaft und Militär,” 279ff. and Meyer, “Über das stereoakustische Hören.”
77. Ladenburg and von Angerer, “Experimentelle Beiträge zu Ausbreitung des Schalles.”
78. Ibid., 293.
79. Ibid., 296.
80. von Angerer, “Ein registrierendes Seitengalvanometer.”
81. Born Papers, Berlin, folder 1268: “Untersuchungen über die Ausbreitung von Schallstrahlen für das Schallmeßverfahren d. Artillerie-Prüfungs-Kommission Berlin 1914–1918.” Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin, manuscript collections.
82. Ladenburg and von Angerer, “Experimentelle Beiträge zu Ausbreitung des Schalles,” 313ff. and 318.
83. von Angerer, Experimententelle Beiträge zur Ausbreitung des Schalls.
84. Hartcup, War of Invention, 136–140, cp. also note 6. Eckert and Schubert, Kristalle, Elektronen, Transistoren, ch. 3.
85. Bensaude-Vincent, Langevin, 92.
86. Barrow-Green, “Planes and Pacifism.”
87. Ibid.
88. Hartree, “Ballistic Calculations.”
89. Hill, Textbook of Anti-Aircraft Gunnery.
90. Hartree, “On the Correction for Non-Uniformity of Field.”
91. Ibid., 749.
92. Hartree, “On Some Approximate Numerical Applications,” 629, 632.
93. Ibid., 632. Cp. Park, “Computational Imperatives,” 311ff.
94. Bragg, “The Interpretation of Intensity Measurements” and Phillips, “William Lawrence Bragg,” 98.
95. Schirrmacher, “Bohrsche Bahnen in Europa.”
96. Medwick, “Douglas Hartree and Early Computations.”
97. As there was no room to expand on this field here, cf. Wittje, The Age of Electroacoustics.
98. Anonymous, “Das Geräusch der Atombewegung.”