JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

“And I will look down and see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of wind, and after a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the lonely and inviolate sand.” —William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

There’s no one that writes about weather (and most everything else) than Mr. Faulkner.  And it was he who came to mind when I found this image leafing through a heavy monster volume of Scientific American.

This is what arose in the Windy City, a forest of cut down trees reconstructed and put together again, with metal and wooden bits to catch the wind, a bunch of them built together by their different makers, all on display at the grand Columbian Exposition of 1893.  They’re not as pretty as trees, but they’re not belching smoke from coal, either, which is something that we can take a lesson away. 

[This is a detail from the front page of the Scientific American, June 3, 1893, from my collection of that great magazine.]