Welcome to On Verticality. This blog explores the innate human need to escape the surface of the earth, and our struggles to do so throughout history. If you’re new here, a good place to start is the Theory of Verticality section or the Introduction to Verticality. If you want to receive updates on what’s new with the blog, you can use the Subscribe page to sign up. Thanks for visiting!
Click to filter posts by the three main subjects for the blog : Architecture, Flight and Mountains.
How to Fall : An Early History of the Parachute
Throughout the history of human flight attempts, the number one cause of death and injury has been a fall from a high place. In the early days of flight attempts, most examples involved jumping from a high perch and trying to stay in the aloft for as long as possible. Alongside these attempts at flight, others were concerned with the art of falling. How could a person leap from a high place and return to the surface safely? The resulting paths of thought make up the early history of the parachute.
What Goes Up, Must Come Down
I love a drawing that tells a story. Here’s an illustration that does just that; it’s a diagram showing the flight path of James Glaisher’s balloon on 18 August 1862, which travelled between Wolverhampton and Solihull, just outside Birmingham in England. It’s essentially a graph that plots altitude over time, with some embellishments added for effect. The story being told is in the graph’s line, which ascends and descends just as the balloon did during its flight.
Markus Pernhart’s Großglockner Paintings
The above painting was created in 1871 by Austrian artist Markus Pernhart. It shows the peak of the Großglockner, or Grossglockner, which is the tallest mountain in Austria. It does a great job capturing the contrasting scales of human and mountain. If you look closely, there are two groups of mountaineers pictured atop each peak, dwarfed by the jagged forms of snow and rock. This puts the focus of the painting on the majestic beauty of the mountaintop, rather than the effort it took the mountaineers to reach it. In many ways, these mountaineers are meaningless when compared to the mountain itself. The Großglockner has been around for millennia, and will still be around long after this expedition is finished.
“Is this the summit, crowning the day? How cool and quiet! We're not exultant; but delighted, joyful; soberly astonished.”
-George Mallory, English mountaineer, 1886-1924.
The Woolworth Building Tower Above the Clouds
The Woolworth Building was the tallest building in the world when it was completed in 1913. It towered above Lower Manhattan and dominated the skyline of the city. The above photograph was taken in 1928, and it shows the crown of the tower poking up through the clouds, inhabiting an otherworldly realm of sunlight and clouds. This is an iconic image, because it shows that buildings as tall as this achieve verticality for their occupants. On a day like this, the upper reaches of the building are truly in the sky.
Bipedalism and The Skyscraper
I came across this diagram the other day, and it immediately struck me. It was drawn in 2003 by James Wines of SITE for his Antilia Tower project, and it superimposes a human body on top of a tower section. I’ve previously written about the conceptual link between the bipedal human body and the tower, but this diagram takes it a step further and matches the functions of each part of the body to each part of the tower.
The Secret Apartment at the Top of the Eiffel Tower
Pictured above is an illustration of the Eiffel Tower’s original crown design. You can see the main observation deck, which is packed with people, all enjoying the view atop the tallest building in the world. Unbeknownst to them, however, is the private apartment located on the floor just above them. It was designed by and for Gustave Eiffel as a private space for himself to entertain notable guests and perform scientific experiments. It’s generally referred to as the secret apartment, but it was fairly well-known to the public that Eiffel built the space for himself.
Jean Mathieu’s Aerostatic Balloon
This is a 1784 design for a finned balloon, designed by Jean Mathieu. It’s called Nouvelle Forme de Globe Aërostatique, which means New Shape for an Aerostatic Balloon. It’s an interesting one, because it’s unclear how it’s supposed to propel itself through the air. The design consists of an ellipsoidal balloon with a small basket underneath, housing two pilots, as well as two side hoods and one rear fin.
Satan Overlooking Paradise by Gustave Doré
This is an illustration by Gustave Doré for John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. The poem deals with the biblical narrative of original sin, and the first half of the story focuses on Satan and his fall from heaven. In this part of the story, Satan is standing on a mountaintop, overlooking the earthly paradise and considering his plan to corrupt Adam and Eve. Milton is using verticality to enhance the drama of the moment, and by placing Satan in such a high place it allows him to examine his motivations more clearly.
Anecdotes : Earning the Summit
I recently had the opportunity to summit Mount Washington in New Hampshire, and the experience brought to light a few aspects of verticality for me. It’s the tallest peak in the Northeast US, famous for it’s erratic weather patterns. As such, it’s been commercialized with a cog railway, auto road, visitor center and museum in order to attract tourist dollars to the park. This makes for an interesting summit experience, which is quite different than a typical mountaintop. Put simply, this is a summit you don’t have to earn by climbing up to it.
“What is the use of climbing Mount Everest? It is of no use. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life.”
-George Mallory, English mountaineer, 1886-1924.
A Mountain of Mountains
Check out this illustration from 1832 of the Principal Mountains in the World. It was drawn by John Dower, and it organizes the world’s mountains into a set of mountains, each from a different region in the world. There are five ‘peaks’, including the British Isles, Africa, Europe, America and Asia. These are ordered from lowest to highest, and they are superimposed on top of one another. This makes it quite simple to compare relative heights across continents, and to understand where the highest peaks are in relation to one another.
A Monument to the Glory of the First Aerial Navigators
Pictured above is the Projet d'un monument à la Gloire des Premiers Navigateurs Aériens, or the Monument to the Glory of the First Aerial Navigators. It was designed by an anonymous author for a site in the Tuileries Garden in Paris, and it consists of a stone arch placed in a fountain, with a balloon flying above it supported by a cloud-like form.
La Belle Alphonsine by E. Florés
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the human quest for flight was continuously on the public’s mind, and the above illustration is a testament to this. It’s from the front page of a French newspaper called La Halle aux Charges from 14 September 1884. This newspaper was well-known for it’s political caricatures and social commentary, and their choice to put a fictional balloon on their front cover is the perfect representation of what a successful flight means for all those involved.
"I wish that I could fly, into the sky, so very high, just like a dragonfly. I'd fly above the trees, over the seas, in all degrees, to anywhere I please."
-Lenny Kravitz, American singer & songwriter, born 1964.
Tessiore’s Balloon Project Towed by a Tame Vulture
Pictured above is a design for a flying machine, consisting of a balloon pulled by a tame vulture. It was originally published in 1845, and was re-published in 1922 in the book L’Aeronautique des origines a 1922. The title of the illustration is Projet de Ballon Remorqué par un Gypaète Spprivoisé, or Project for a Balloon Towed by a Tame Vulture. I’m unable to find any data on the image apart from this, but the content itself is enough to discuss, for obvious reasons.
W.F. Quinby and his Three Flying Machine Patents
Pictured above is a patent drawing for a flying machine, designed in 1869 by Watson Fell Quinby, or W.F. for short. It’s the second of three patents for flying machines that Quinby has to his name. It shows a man flying with three wing-like sails attached to him, along with some rudimentary controls at his hands and feet. As with all of Quinby’s designs, we don’t have any photos to compare the patent drawings to, so we’ll have to assume that if he built any prototypes, they weren’t successful.
Nadar and the Aerial Perspective
Pictured above is Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, better known by the pseudonym Nadar, who was a French photographer in the nineteenth century, just when aeronautics and air travel were entering popular culture. He was fascinated by human flight, and in 1858 he became the first person to successfully take aerial photographs while he was in a balloon. He subsequently commissioned balloons to be designed and built, and he would allow passengers to take flights with him. He was no doubt obsessed with verticality, and his aerial photographs mark a major turning point in the history of human flight.
“O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?”
-From The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, Italian poet and philosopher, 1265-1321.
The Wright Brothers’ Flying Machine Patent
I find it fascinating to look at patent drawings of iconic designs throughout history. It’s like you’re getting a glimpse of the design process, before an object enters the public consciousness. Pictured above is a patent for the Wright Brothers’ flying machine, which has since become synonymous with the first ever powered flight. I love how drawings like this strip away any artistic style or vision, and just focus on the object itself. This is a hugely important object that lives on in the history of aviation and human achievement, but it’s rendered here in the most basic, unpretentious way.