I was re-reading Barbara Tuchman’s 1981 book Practicing History and came across an article she wrote for Foreign Affairs, in 1936. It was entitled “Japan: A Clinical Note.” It smacks of today’s news.

Historical context

Japan invaded Manchuria on September 19, 1931. They established a puppet state, called Manchukuo, and occupied it until the end of World War II. 

Tuchman’s opening paragraph

“Ever since the Manchurian incident, Japanese foreign policy has been reaping the world’s condemnation. Unlike an individual, a nation cannot admit itself in error; so Japan’s only answer has been to tell herself that her judges are wrong and she is right. To strengthen this contention, she has built up the belief that she acts from the purest motives which her fellow nations willfully misunderstand. The more they disapprove, the more adamant grows Japan’s conviction that she is right.”

Do we ever learn from history?

Here’s Tuckman again, later in the book.

“If history were a science, we should be able to get a grip on her, learn her ways, establish her patterns, know what will happen tomorrow. Why is it that we cannot? The answer lies in what I call the Unknowable Variable – namely, man. Human beings are always and finally the subject of history. History is the record of human behavior, the most fascinating subject of all, but illogical and so crammed with an unlimited number of variables that it is not susceptible of the scientific method nor of systematizing.”

Prepare for the future?

Russia is not Japan. Today’s inflation is not 1970’s inflation. Today’s banking issues are not the Savings & Loan crisis of the past.

But …. Human nature is consistent. Become a “people person” to better understand the future.

This is a story that has nothing to do with the internet. It has to do with health, safety, and quality of life. And, if you’re like me, you’ve enjoyed the benefits of a networked house for a long time.

“Back in the Day”

You used candles and kerosene lanterns for light at night. If you got careless a fire ensued and maybe, just maybe, you burned down the house.

You used a privy or outhouse for your toilet needs. Or maybe you lived in a tenement with a water closet for twenty people. Nice, but it emptied into a cesspool in the “back yard.” Not too sanitary.

You only occasionally bathed because you had to haul water from the well and then heat it on a wood-burning stove. Good thing that everyone smelled as bad.

You had coal delivered so that you could heat the house in the winter. Oh, dad had to stoke the furnace in the morning before he went to work.

If someone got sick you had to “run into town” to fetch the doctor (who may, or may not, be home.)

The networked house?

From the late 1800s until about 1940 the houses and apartment we’re familiar with today slowly connected to a series of networks: electricity, water, sewer, gas, and telephone.

Edison’s vision was for a lighting system, not just a light bulb. New York’s Pearl Street Station was started in the 1880s and provided electricity to about one square mile. Now we flick a switch, not strike a match for light.

New York City relied on well water until 1842, when the Croton Aqueduct brought water along a forty-two-mile journey. Pressurized, filter water could then be brought into a house (or tenement) and be trusted to be free of many contaminants.

Water closets finally connected to a network of sewers and took sewage away. Chicago’s sewer system was started in the 1880s (requiring raising many city streets up to 14 feet) and was the largest in the world by 1930.

Natural gas pipelines were constructed in the 1920s and gas slowly replaced delivered coal for heating purposes. Basements became habitable and houses could be heated throughout the day.

Although telephones were in use in the late 1800s, the real growth came after switching technology was developed and continuously improved in the early 20^th century. As the old Yellow Pages ad used to say, “Let your fingers do the walking.”

Perspective

Sometimes I look at today’s innovations and wonder “so what?” Moving from Web2 to Web3 may make a difference to someone looking for a new way to move money without using banks but, again, so what?

Bitcoin or a working toilet?  Which one do you think will be seen as a more important innovation a hundred years from now?

Looking back in time I see numerous innovations that solved real problems and changed lives. We need more “mechanicians.” (FYI, that’s an 18^th century word for artisans skilled in the creation, operation, and repair of machinery that “did stuff.”)

Germany started flying rigid airships when they launched the Zeppelin line in 1910 and successfully carried passengers globally for thousands of flights. This form of civilian air travel was interrupted by WWI but resumed after the war.

In 1928 the Graf Zeppelin took passengers on a 112-hour non-stop flight from Germany to New Jersey. Over the next nine years it flew over a million miles, on 590 flights, carrying freight, mail, and thousands of passengers around the world. Safe and reliable.

So why did England decide to design their own airship rather than copy the airframe of the Germans? Pride? Anti-Germany sentiment? Not sure.

R101

In 1924, the British government launched competitive efforts for a new airship, pitting the government against a private contractor. The result was two airships, the R100 and R101.

The government R101 ended up twenty-three tons over design weight and was then lengthened for additional gas bags to improve lift. It was ready for air-worthiness testing in October, 1930. And here is where politics played a deadly hand.

Lord Thompson, the royal Air Minister, demanded the R101 to be shown at an air show in London on October 20, 1930. However, he also had planned a round trip to India to “show the flag” over a major part of the British Empire. So, with a total of seventeen hours of flight test after the retrofit, the R101 launched for the first leg to India during the night of October 4^th, the latest opportunity to meet both schedules.

It gently crashed a few hours later against a high French hill. But because hydrogen was used for the gas bags, forty-six of the 54 aboard were killed in the ensuing fire.

The official board of inquiry found that it was “impossible to avoid the conclusion that the R101 would not have started for India on the evening of October 4th if it had not been that matters of public policy were considered as making it highly desirable that she should do so.”

Lesson

Political pressure and operating decisions are a deadly combination. Beware.