How a steam-powered automobile in 1869 snuffed out the life of the sensible naturalist and astronomer Mary Ward. Episode 289 | November 2, 2021 Distillations Podcast | Episode 289 | November 2, 2021 In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean talks about Mary Ward, a budding naturalist and astronomer from Ireland. She spent lots of time observing crops and animals via a microscope and published a guide of detailed sketches that dazzled readers and colleagues within the 1800s. However, her profession was reduce brief by an odd curiosity of that time period: the auto. They weren’t the same vehicles which are round right now, but her demise was the primary automobile demise recorded in historical past, and it foreshadowed the carnage the car continues to leave behind. Credits Host: Sam Kean Senior Producer: Mariel Carr Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer Transcript In August 1869, Mary Ward badly wanted a trip. She was a slender, sharp-featured 42-year-old with a round nostril and dark hair that lined her ears. As an energetic naturalist and astronomer, she’d been laboring onerous to carve out a place for herself in the overwhelmingly male world of Victorian science. She was additionally raising eight youngsters more or less by herself—which was kind of ridiculous even by nineteenth-century Irish standards. So simply when she was nearing her breaking level, Mary took off to go to her cousin’s fort, situated within the Irish midlands west of Dublin. On the journey, her naturalist eye should have appreciated the beautiful, rolling green hills surrounding the citadel. And while the Irish skies aren’t precisely optimum for astronomy—too many cloudy nights—she should have tingled with pleasure to know that the fort may boast of one of the largest telescopes in the world, which she was wanting to explore. The citadel additionally had—believe it or not—a steam-powered automobile. In the 1860s, automobiles had been mainly giant toys. People constructed them of their garages simply because they might, for the game of it. A little extra significantly, folks have been also tinkering with new types of engines, and exploring the bounds of the field of thermodynamics—the identical subject that was transforming Great Britain and ushering within the Industrial Revolution. So when someone at the fort advised taking this do-it-yourself steam jalopy out for a spin, a scientist like Mary leapt on the alternative. Imagine the scene: a uncommon sunshiny day, a city green, people whistling and clapping as they zoomed by. Death was probably the furthest thing from their minds. But nevertheless much folks treated cars as toys back then, vehicles had been however dangerous toys. And sadly, the group’s little lark ended with Mary Ward being crushed underneath its wheels. This gave the 42-year-old scientist the dubious distinction of the very first automobile fatality in history—cutting quick what might need been, if not for a demanding home life and one errant turn, an even more outstanding profession. Ward obtained her begin in science early. She started amassing butterflies at age three. In 1835, at age eight, she spied Halley’s comet all by herself by way of a small telescope one night—a discovery she then introduced, quite adorably, to the visitors at a dinner party her parents had been internet hosting. Her family additionally took collecting journeys to the peat bogs close to her birthplace of Billylin, and instances of bugs and feathers and dried flowers started to crowd their walls. Eventually Mary’s father, a pastor who encouraged her interest in science, purchased a high-powered microscope for her for over £48 pounds, roughly $4,200 right now. Microscopes were expensive and fairly unique instruments then. Before that time, Ward had to depend on weak magnifying glasses as an alternative. The microscope opened a whole new world to her, and he or she began enthusiastically studying the nice particulars of various plants and animals, everything from bat hair to the scaly wings of moths to cod eyeballs that she dissected herself and peeled back layer by layer. This microscope research formed the basis of Ward’s first guide, which she both wrote and illustrated. It’s called Sketches with the Microscope—later retitled A World of Wonders Revealed by the Microscope. It took the form of a series of letters to her good friend Emily. In the letters, Ward offers each shut anatomical analysis of bugs in addition to practical recommendation on using the instrument. And I even have to say, I a lot prefer her heat type of instruction to the quite dry and cold style of most scientific papers. People on the time apparently agreed. The book went by way of eight editions, and one historian famous that its mixture of accessible explanations and lavish drawings, quote, “did as much to make the microscope in style as some other guide of the time.” That’s fairly an achievement. Ward’s second book, known as Entomology for Sport, was based mostly on a long poem that Ward and her sister Jane wrote throughout their teenage years. And once again, it managed to blend leisure and rigor. It included each exact anatomical drawings in addition to bits of whimsy, similar to a picture of bugs dancing around a floral Maypole. Meanwhile, Ward kept working in astronomy as well. In one more e-book, referred to as Telescope Teachings, she used her creative expertise to provide beautiful photos of different heavenly our bodies. Some people compared their crispness to images, and so they rank among the many most interesting of the period. She also revealed studies on comets passing via the night sky, as nicely as the transit of Venus across the Sun. Although science back then was little greater than a good-ol’-boys membership, other scientists did take notice of Ward. For occasion, her astronomy work earned her the honor of being certainly one of simply three ladies allowed to receive the monthly bulletin of the Royal Astronomical Society. The different two were the pioneering American astronomer Maria Mitchell, and Queen Victoria herself. Still, establishing herself in science was an uphill battle for Ward. As a girl, she was barred from both a college education in addition to membership in most professional scientific societies, the similar old routes to recognition then. Even her broadly read first guide had been printed privately at first, apparently as a result of no one would publish a scientific book by a lady. Only when sales jumped did a London publishing house snap it up. Overall, Ward’s success is a testament to her perseverance. Perhaps most superb of all, Ward did all this work whereas enduring 11 separate pregnancies—including one stillbirth and two miscarriages. And she did all that in simply 13 years of marriage. Her husband Henry was a military captain—weak-chinned and be-mustached, with curious tufts of hair spiraling out from over his ears. He’d been born into the aristocracy, and was the younger brother of a viscount. But after retiring from the navy, Henry turned a gentleman of leisure and by no means labored again. And unfortunately, he hailed from a kind of branches of the aristocracy that, nevertheless wealthy in titles and prestige, was quite poor when it comes to money flow. Honorifics couldn’t pay for childcare, and Ward therefore needed to elevate all eight of her surviving youngsters kind of alone. The husband did have an inheritance. But as it dwindled, 12 months by year, child by child, the family was forced squeezed into a sequence of more and more dilapidated rental properties. Productive as Ward was, she all the time needed to fit her science around her home duties. The lack of money and time had to be even more galling to her considering that certainly one of her cousins spent lavishly on his own analysis. William Parsons was the 3rd Earl of Rosse . He owned a citadel close to the town of Birr, roughly 10 miles from Ward’s birthplace. The citadel was reportedly somewhat ugly—an Janus-faced mixture of Gothic type on one aspect and classical Greek style on the other side, because the authentic owner and his wife couldn’t agree on a method that suited each. Still, it will have to have held a special place in Mary Ward’s heart, since it boasted the world’s largest telescope within the second half of the nineteenth century. Nicknamed the “leviathan of Birr,” the telescope stretched fifty feet long, and its six-foot-wide mirror weighed 4 tons. The science-fiction author Jules Verne even talked about the leviathan telescope in a novel of his, called From the Earth to the Moon. The Earl also indulged himself in constructing the heavy equipment of the Industrial Revolution. Wary guests keep in mind furnaces belching out black coal smoke as they approached his castle. Unfortunately, this love of heavy machinery ended up dooming the Earl’s cousin Mary. In the late 1860s, Parsons hand-built one of the world’s first automobiles. Just like probably the most superior engines of the day, the automobile was steam-powered, not gasoline powered. It was fabricated from black steel, with a physique formed like a giant oil drum lying on its side. A sort of chimney on prime launch steam pressure. Rather the modern design of 4 rubber wheels, this automobile had three thick wheels manufactured from iron to battle the bumpy native roads. There was one small wheel up entrance, and two large ones in the rear—like a reverse of those penny-farthing bicycles that have been so well-liked in the late 1800s. So in August 1869, when Ward visited the fort and somebody instructed taking the steam-mobile out for a spin, she little doubt stated sure in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, four different folks wanted to ride as properly. And as a substitute of making them wait, Mary’s cousin let them all pile on. Now, there’s no document of who precisely sat where. But you in all probability won’t be surprised to know that cousin William, along with all his other technological toys, also lavished his riches on the nascent know-how of pictures. So photos of the car do exist. You can see these pictures, as properly as some beautiful drawings from Mary’s scientific work, at patreon.com/disappearingspoon. The images of the steam-mobile show barely enough room for three folks on the front bench, so the car was likely overcrowded that day. There was a back bench, too, however that didn’t exactly look safe, either. People would have had to sit with their legs dangling just inches from the ground. On their lark that day, they put-put-putted out from the citadel and headed toward the village of Birr. There, they decided to circle the city green. According to a minimal of one witness, the driver was “traveling at a simple pace” as he approached St. Brendan’s church there. That was the deliberate turnaround level, so he cranked the steering wheel and started to round the corner. What happened next stays obscure to this present day. Perhaps they hit a rock or pothole. Perhaps they weren’t really traveling as such an “easy tempo.” Perhaps homemade cars in 1869 just didn’t flip smoothly. Regardless, the overcrowded carriage jolted through the turn. And during this jolt, Ward was tossed into the air, as if she’d been thrown from a bucking bronco. A second later she hit the bottom. And a second after that, one of the huge iron wheels crushed her. A local physician arrived within two minutes of the accident. But it already was too late. The wheel had broken Ward’s neck and jaw. Her lips had been badly reduce, and she or he was bleeding from the ears. The doctor later mentioned that she’d little doubt fractured her skull—an injury with a high likelihood of dying again then. As the physician looked on, helpless, Ward’s face turned ugly grey colors, and her tongue started twitching each time she tried to breathe. Within a minute of the doctor’s arrival, she was useless. According to family lore, the automotive was dismantled and probably buried underneath the courtyard of the citadel, never to run once more. Mary Ward’s demise was especially poignant contemplating what happened to her household. A dozen years after her demise, her husband’s older brother died. The brother had no children, which meant that Mary’s widower husband inherited the title of viscount—along with all the trimmings of a peer. Suddenly the Ward household had money—not to mention a nice property, and servants to assist prepare dinner and look after the kids. She would have been free from drudgery eventually. In the years she did have, Ward’s scientific output was spectacular enough. But if the seating arrangement on the steam car been different that day—and if she had lived to enjoy, à la Virginia Woolf, a lab of her own—there’s no telling what Ward might have completed. After Ward, one other person wouldn’t die in an automobile accident until, depending on the supply you see, both 1896 or 1898—nearly thirty years. Since then, after all, tens of millions of people have died in accidents throughout the globe, and 1.three million more be part of them yearly. It’s a carnage matched by few other inventions in historical past. But this very first automobile death nonetheless stands out—not only for its novelty however for prematurely snuffing out one of many rare feminine stars of Victorian science.