JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 608 Blog Bookstore
I’ve long been interested in the history of the display of quantitative data, and have written about it here and there on this blog. Yesterday’s post on Big Crowds touched on a display of parked B-17s, seen in an airfield in Munich right at the end of WWII. My friend Jeff Donlan posted a comment on how cool the image of the B-17s looked when he used the scroll button on his mouse. And voila–he was right and it moved me to fit together a series of these to get a slight idea of what a lot of these planes might’ve looked like, flying together. At one point in 1944, there were more than 4,890 B-17s flying, and so I pieced together 47 sheets to see what effect it would have to see all of these planes in one swing. Even though I knew what to expect–since I was making this little video–I still had a “Holy bloody crap!” reaction to the display of the numbers. It is really difficult to try and get some sort of idea about what 4,890 planes might look like–this really doesn’t come close, and it doesn’t address the enormous sound involved, but it is a start.
