A Victorian anatomist crashed a flying machine, then argued that spirals shape all of nature
the gist
In 1903 the Scottish anatomist James Bell Pettigrew, aged 69, sat in a petrol-powered flying machine he had designed on a slope near St Andrews. Over forty years he had built many models, and his ornithopter flapped its wings in figure-of-eight curves that he believed animals used in flight. The machine flew about twenty metres before crashing. While recovering, Pettigrew wrote Design in Nature, a sprawling three-volume work with nearly 2,000 illustrations. It collects spiral forms from galaxies and crystals to shells, horns, plant tendrils and the human cochlea. Pettigrew saw spirals as evidence of design, not chance, and he dismissed Darwin's account of climbing plants. The book is now a forgotten curiosity of Victorian science, with its plates still striking to look at.
so what
Pettigrew's book shows how Victorian science mixed careful dissection with grand theories, and how one scientist's obsession with a single pattern could carry him far from mainstream evidence.
fun fact
Pettigrew worked for decades on aeronautical experiments, starting in London in 1864.
In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.
how it works
To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.
so what
A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.
the bigger pattern
Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.
fun fact
In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.
more on this
background
A Corner in Wheat is a 1909 American short silent film which tells of a greedy tycoon who tries to corner the market in wheat, destroying the lives of the people who can no longer afford to buy bread. It was directed by D. W. Griffith and adapted by Griffith and Frank E. Woods from a novel and a short story by Frank Norris, titled The Pit and "A Deal in Wheat". Griffith may have had a real-life inspiration: six months earlier, James A. Patten had actually cornered the market in wheat, and in some cities, the price of bread doubled from five cents to ten, just as in the movie.
In 1994, A Corner in Wheat was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Usman Khawaja refuses to answer Sandpapergate question about Pat Cummins | 7.30
from ABC News In-depth
One of the darkest days in Australia's sporting history has been dragged back into the spotlight.
A new autobiography by former Test cricketer Usman Khawaja has made explosive revelations about the Australian Test team's 2018 ball-tampering saga in South Africa.
7.30 host Sarah Ferguson speaks to Usman Khawaja.
7.30 is the ABC's flagship current affairs program, delivering original journalism, exclusive investigations, in-depth analysis and interviews on the major issues affecting Australia and the world.
With on-the-ground reporting from ABC journalists across every state and territory and around the world, 7.30 has the latest on politics, policy, the economy, cost of living, housing, health, climate and energy, national security and global affairs.
Note: In most cases, our captions are auto-generated.
