Monsters: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Birth of Pathological Technology

The 1937 burning of the Hindenberg was a worldwide sensation and the first filmed disaster, and science writer Regis (What Is Life?) adds that the development of the zeppelin itself represented a new, ominous technological phenomenon. The work is primarily a history of the rigid airship and biography of its eponymous champion, German count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. Beginning in 1890, Count Zeppelin built a series of huge, hydrogen-fueled airships of Rube Goldberg complexity that regularly crashed and burned. Yet Germans were fascinated, and he had little trouble raising money. By 1906, zeppelins were carrying passengers; international flights began after WWI. Despite frequent mishaps, culminating in the Hindenburg debacle, years passed before Germany gave up on zeppelins. Regis calls this an example of pathological technology: irrationally popular projects whose costs vastly exceed benefits. Concluding chapters address America’s Operation Plowshare, the plan to use nuclear bombs for major construction projects; the Superconducting Supercollider, a massive particle accelerator canceled in 1993; and the 100-Year Starship, the brainchild of an enthusiastic group whose goals include establishing “Earth 2.0 in another solar system” by 2112. Regis’s material is all fascinating, but it fails to properly cohere; the book’s premise feels like an ingenious afterthought tacked onto a fine history of Zeppelin and his disastrous airships. [em]Agent: Katinka Matson, Brockman Inc. (Sept.) [/em]