Three Stories Concerning Mechanical Music

I recently saw two things on TV that I thought might be of interest
to mechanical music fans, and they reminded me of a third thing that
I will save for last, for reasons that will soon be obvious.

The first thing is that Turner Classic Movies was showing a 1941 Errol
Flynn movie called "Dive Bomber".  The plot of the movie concerns a
problem encountered when pilots do a steep dive and try to pull out
of it as they near the ground.  The G (gravity) forces are so great
as they try to pull out that the blood rushes away from their head,
causing them to black out and crash.  The pilots cannot slow down
because in combat conditions this would make them a sitting duck.
The solution comes when they invent a rubber device to be worn over
the groin area; it looks exactly like a big diaper!  The theory is
that when the pilot begins a crash dive, he inflates the diaper with
compressed air which squeezes the body, and prevents the blood from
rushing from his head.

The connection to mechanical music comes about 40 minutes into the
picture; a group of pilots are training on an early flight simulator.
As most of us know, Edwin Link of the Link Nickelodeon Company is
considered one of the most important contributors to this field.  He
supposedly used spare Player Piano parts to build his simulator, and
this certainly appears to be true as the simulator in this movie has
got two wind motors cranking around furiously underneath the plane.
Player technicians know that nothing looks like a wind motor except
for another wind motor, and there are clearly two of them underneath
this plane!

The second story concerns Igor Sikorsky, a Russian émigré who is
considered one of the giants of Aviation history.  He was born in the
1880's and showed remarkable talent as a young man for designing
airplanes.  His mother was a fine pianist, and Igor's daughter Pravda
had a long career as a concert pianist and teacher.  Sikorsky was so
talented that he got a few awards for his abilities from the Russian
Czar, and this was to prove disastrous to him a few years later when
the Revolution came and anyone who got an award from the Czar was
considered an enemy of the people, and he was marked for death.
Fleeing Russia penniless, he arrived in NY just in time to see the end
of WW1, and the government was selling off all its airplanes cheaply
to the few people who were interested in buying them.  Naturally, there
was no market for an airplane designer, and he took whatever work he
could to get by.

A few years later, some Russian friends raised some money, and asked
Sikorsky to design an airplane for them.  They started construction in
Roosevelt Field, Long Island, New York -- the same field that Lindbergh
would leave on his flight to Paris a few years later.  As they near
completion, the money ran out and everything stops cold.

One day, as they are out on the field wondering what to do, they notice
a high quality car driving towards them.  Soon, a chauffeur opens the
door, and a man steps out and asks for Sikorsky.  He is shown the
incomplete plane, and everybody is wondering who this man is, and what
does he care about aviation?  Eventually the man pulls out his wallet
and hands Sikorsky a check for $5000, a sum certainly greater that
$50,000 in today's money.  The man says that he has heard of Sikorsky
and trusts him with the money; no specific details are spoken or
written about how or when the money will be paid back.  In any case,
the plane is finished and shows the remarkable talents of Sikorsky in
designing aircraft.  After that, more orders come in and Sikorsky
becomes the wealthy owner of an Aircraft company.

Probably his most famous achievement is that he is considered the
inventor of the helicopter, a vehicle he read about in a Jules Verne
novel when he was growing up.  One ironic aspect of this invention is
that Sikorsky thought an aircraft that could fly straight up, hover,
move sideways and so on would be a great help in rescuing people.
When he presented his idea to the Navy, the officers were unimpressed
because they had little desire in rescuing people; they were more
interested in killing the enemy.  When Sikorsky realized this, he again
presented his helicopter to the Navy, and he showed how various weapons
could be attached to it, and he won the contract.

As for the mysterious stranger? His name was Sergei Rachmaninoff.

The third story was saved for last since it is so disgusting that
I felt a lot of people would not continue reading if this story were
presented first, so here goes: Late one night I was unable to get to
sleep, and I found in the television listings a program on the history
of leather making.  Well, that is a subject that I would not mind
learning more about, and so I tuned in.  They showed the machinery for
mechanically pulling the skin off a dead animal, and that was pretty
strong stuff, but I continued to watch.

The part that really got to me concerned the early processes for
helping to tan leather.  It seemed that a variety of chemicals were
used, and one substance that proved itself as very valuable was dog
excrement.  Yes, that's right: dog excrement.  As if that was not bad
enough, it was explained that whatever chemical reaction the excrement
had on the leather was much more effective if the excrement was heated
in large tanks!! At that point, I changed the channel.

Randolph Herr