Anyone trying to make sense of Charles Dellschau’s partly-enciphered airship drawings will quickly run into three roadblocks: (1) what was the mysterious “NB gas” that allegedly made the airships buoyant? (2) What was the curious green “soup” that was allegedly used to release additional NB gas whilst in flight? (3) What was the mysterious group “NYMZA”, whose enciphered initials appear on so many pages of Dellschau’s notebooks?
Here’s what “NYMZA” looks like in Dellschau’s cipher:
NB Gas
In terms of chemistry, there are very few substances that are less dense than air at normal air pressures and temperatures (and that can hence be used to lift an airship).
Of these, hydrogen is the best known, but it is prone to explosion; methane too is similarly prone to going bang; while helium was only properly isolated in 1895 (and so was not in play in 1856, the year when – according to Dellschau – Peter Mennis discovered “NB gas”), broadly similar to neon, krypton, argon etc.
However, there is one other “lifting gas” that was within reach of inventors circa 1850: ammonia. Even though ammonia is only half as dense as air (by way of comparison, hydrogen has 8% of the density of air, so an ammonia-filled balloon would need to be a fair bit bigger to get the same lift), and is stinky and noxious, it has many secondary benefits.
Interestingly, there’s a 2016 article by Brett Cohen (Karl Kluge kindly pointed this out to me, thanks Karl!), published in “Shadows of Your Mind” Vol. 1 #10, pp.78-81), that proposes that Peter Mennis’ NB gas was indeed ammonia.
It’s a good theory, certainly better than Jerry Decker’s somewhat forlorn theorification that Mennis may have found one of 26 elements supposedly missing from the periodic table before hydrogen. (*sigh*)
Even if we proceed by Holmesian elimination, ammonia seems a strong pick. And yet… it has to be pointed out that ammonia’s relatively meagre advantage over air as a lifting gas would probably have meant bigger balloon envelopes than the ones depicted by Dellschau. This is a tricky issue that everyone panning Dellschau’s notebooks for historical gold dust has to face up to.
All the same, I think it’s fair to say that ammonia is a very strong candidate for NB gas, with no obvious alternative contender (Dellschau repeats many times the idea that other gases were too explosive to be used in airships – and though ammonia is, ummm, slightly explosive, it’s still less troublesome than the others).
Suppe
The second problem is the “suppe” (which Dellschau always paints green): this is a liquid substance that get somehow poured onto a spiked ‘turner’ device, releasing the NB gas. At one point, Dellschau calls it “pys suppe” (which I believe means “pea soup”, though you will have to form your own opinion).
Want your airship to go up? Pour “suppe” onto your spike turner to release NB gas into your balloon envelope. Want your airship to go down? Release some NB gas from your balloon envelope. Whereas the most technically aware balloonists of the day were using ballonets (inflatable air bags inside the hydrogen gas bag), an ammonia-based airship need – theoretically – not use any such additional mechanism.
Cohen thinks that the two substances that were added together to release ammonia were were ammonium chloride (NH4Cl, A.K.A. sal ammoniac) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH, A.K.A lye, or caustic soda, first properly isolated by Sir Humphry Davy in 1807). The equation he points to is:
NH4Cl + NaOH –> NH3 (ammonia gas) + NaCl (sodium chloride) + H20
In Cohen’s concluding paragraph, he proposes “that ammonia gas (NH3) could be produced from a simple mixture of two solids, ammonium chloride (NH4Cl) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH) dissolved completely in water and allowed to react.”
Incidentally, ammonium chloride is used as a food additive under the title “E510”. If you’ve had “salty liquorice” in Northern Europe, you’ve probably eaten ammonium chloride.
Overall, Cohen’s account is sensible and rational: and yet it has to be said that neither ammonium choride nor sodium hydroxide has a green appearance. In Crenshaw’s book (p.89), Peter Mennis’ discovery of NB gas is phrased in terms of “searching for a better way to extract gold from quartz”, and an experiment that went wrong (in a good way), though Crenshaw doesn’t connect this explicitly with references to Dellschau’s notebooks.
Cohen may be right, or he may be wrong – it’s hard to tell. Even if Mennis’ NB gas is indeed ammonia, I think it’s hard to feel confident the “suppe” secret sauce has yet been figured out properly.
NYMZA
In many places, Dellschau alludes to what seems to be a shadowy group of investors who were at least partially bankrolling the inventors in the Sonora Aero Club: he calls the group “NYMZA” (but only ever writes its initials in cipher, as far as I can tell).
If NYMZA is an acronym, it’s certainly a curious one: though it’s hard not to read the first two letters as “New York” (arguably the investment capital of the world back then), the “MZA” part feels much more like a German acronym.
If the “M” is the first letter of a German word, I wondered if it might be (for example) “mechanisch or mechaniker”. Similarly, I wondered whether the “Z” might stand for “zunft” (guild), “zirkel” (circle), or “zeichner” (draftsman / designer). Finally, I wondered if the “A” might stand for “Assoziation”. However, my cunning websearches for all of these yielded plenty of false positives, but nothing actually helpful.
Yet Dellschau himself was born in Prussia in 1830, and his written language is a mishmash of English, German, French and sometimes apparently phonetic renderings. For example, I personally find it hard not to read all Dellschau’s transcriptions of “Moyk Gorée” and not to wonder whether the person’s name was simply “Mike Grey” (possibly from Britain or Ireland?).
In that context, it’s also quite hard for me to look at “NYMZA” and not wonder whether this was an imaginary Anglo-German group of investors that Dellschau had himself made up. In which case, the question is whether Dellschau had made it up in 1857 in California, or whether he made it up back in Houston many years later.
Your thoughts, Nick?
Though it would be nice to believe that NYMZA and Sonora Aero Club existed just as Dellschau’s notebooks imply, there currently seem to be more historical and technical impediments than supporting evidence.
To be fair, I can imagine that Californian miner Peter Mennis existed, and even that he indeed discovered a lifting “NB gas”; I can even imagine that Mennis may have been able to build a small test balloon using his NB gas, and excite other people’s imaginations.
Yet startup ventures throughout history have faced immense difficulties re-engineering a demonstrator into something that works at scale: and, so far, I don’t really see any way that the rest of the Sonora Aero Club (itself a name that wasn’t really possible until 1900 or so) was anything apart from a local Liar’s Club / drinking club formed to fantasize about manned flight amidst the brutal day-to-day madness of a Gold Rush.
But hopefully I’ll be proved wrong. 😉
“Similarly, I wondered whether the “Z” might stand for “zunft” (guild), “zirkel” (circle), or “zeichner” (draftsman / designer)”
Some more possibilities:
– Zeug (things, stuff), going together with other words like Flugzeug (airplane)
– Zukunft (future)
I found this link: https://buradabiliyorum.com/help-needed-to-correctly-decrypt-charles-dellschaus-ciphertexts-klausis-krypto-kolumne/.
Hope it helps.
Dellschau’s work was discovered posthumously, so of course the artist was not available to say whether he intended it as fact, fiction, or some combination thereof. While one cannot definitely say Dellschau ever was in California, he mentions: Sylvester Moore and John Hoppin. Since these otherwise obscure men really existed, it stands to reason that Dellschau spent several years in California in the 1850s. (see below).
Even so, there are several problems with believing the Sonora Aero Club airships were real. The population of Tuolumne County in the 1860 was over 16,000. Airships turn heads and are hard to hide, but no rumor of one exists (beyond Dellshau).
Logistical problems are damning as well. In the 1850s, anything that could not be produced locally had to be shipped around Cape Horn or transshipped through Central America– a process which took months. Letters back the east took equally long. Beyond necessities and mining equipage little was available, and prices were hellish. Even whisky (for miners a necessity) was very scarce. Instead they drank wine, which could be produced locally. It would be next to impossible for materials necessary for an airship to be available in Sonora at that time.
The logistical problems would be as great regarding knowledge as well. In the 1850s, airships pushed the limits of human technical knowledge. What are the chances that knowledge converged in the Gold Rush California?
Also, Sonora lies in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada at 550m (1800 ft) elevation. These are pretty steep. You don’t launch an airship in mountains for the same reason you don’t fly a kite in a forest.
We find Mr. Pelling’s comment about a liar’s club intriguing. Our initial speculation on the 1897 airship involved E. Clampus Vitus– a fraternal order known better for dipsomania and tomfoolery than for scientific endeavors. We visited the E. Clampus lodge in Winnemucca Nevada a few weeks ago on a Friday evening around eight o’clock– hoping to inquire about the late 19th century exploits of the order. At that late hour the membership were too involved in their traditional pursuits to have any interest in their history or in anything else for that matter.
Insofar as we can tell, E. Clampus was inactive during the 1890s, but we have not abandoned the idea entirely.
________________
Source:
Charles A. Dellschau: 1830–1923. James Brett, et al.
Marquand Books, Seattle
D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, New York: 2013
P35
The last page of Recolections [one of Dellshau’s works] is inscribed with the date March 1859, but this may simply be a notation of the time frame of the contents within; the years 1856 and 1859, as well as the years in between, appear frequently in his work, and these are the years he is believed to have been in California.
P36-7
Dellschau was evidently drawing while in California—Erinnerungen [another Dellshau work] contains a passage about a drawing he made for the Von Roemelings as a wedding gift. After confessing that he too was slightly in love with the bride,… he drew a picture of what might have happened had Madam Glantz been present to catch von Roemeling when he fell from the Goose. “I handed the drawing to the lucky groom as a wedding present. Chris looked at it, laughed . . . and said ‘Charles you dog, thanks for this caricature. I’ll keep it for ever to remember you by.’” Recolections and Erinnerungen also include details of the artist’s occupation during these years. After the von Roemelings’ wedding, he reports, he traveled around Northern California for five months working in various slaughterhouses, among them one owned by a rancher named Sylvester Moore in Marysville. When Moore sold his ranch to the Hoppin brothers of Eureka and Goodyear’s Bar, Dellschau began working for John Hoppin. He soon grew disenchanted with Hoppin, however, and returned to Sonora, taking a job with a man named Carl Becht selling meat to miners. Four months later, when Dellschau received a letter with a job offer from an old friend in Texas, he decided to return home, traveling the first leg of his journey on the Golden Gate steamer.35
Hassan, thanks for that link. One part made me laugh aloud:
“… the key table provided above appears to work not very well…. perhaps [Dellschau] thought of his ciphertexts as art, not as something that carries information.”
LeifFraNorden: Brett et al is a little bit out of my book budget, alas. 🙁 But even so, there should be plenty for room for me to do some good digging on this, even without Julius Koch’s shovel. 🙂
The chemical reaction itself doesn’t have to be green. Perhaps impurities in the stuff as found/produced/imported/whatever rendered the “suppe” a hue that can be called green. Could also be a dye for artistic appeal or obfuscation. Or even a side effect of the vessel in use.
The ‘Brett et al.’ books is available online as a .pdf:
http://www.shishigami.com/srfa/Charles_Dellschau_FINAL.pdf
LeifFraNorden: excellent, thanks! I’m reading it now, will be a little while… 🙂
Flynn Glover: all true, yes. My point was simply that even if NB gas was indeed ammonia, we still have many open questions about “suppe”.
If Peter Mennis existed and worked as a miner, I would imagine that he was talking about carbite gas. It was used for portable lighting and replaced candlelight.
A mineral that reacts with water and releases a gas. Atzetylene. Combustible and slightly lighter than air. Highly explosive in a certain air-gas mixture.
Also leaves a muddy soup.
Has also been used for welding for 100 years.