#george simpson

[leechhouse]

The anatomy of the bones and muscles by George Simpson

[tealin]

Scene 4: Int. Cape Evans, Science Corner

If the photos aren't loading for you here, check out the original post at twirlynoodle.com/blog.

Having exited the cosy nook of the executive cabins (which you can just see in the image below, to the left), we are now standing with our back to the rest of the hut, looking at one of the prominent structures built into the interior space: the Darkroom.

Herbert Ponting was a very serious photographer, and was brought along on the Terra Nova Expedition not just to document the science and geography, but to communicate the endeavour in the press back home. He took hundreds of photos and even shot some film – a most precious reference for someone trying to bring the dead back to life. This darkroom was not only his workspace but also his cabin, with a bed that folded up against the wall when not in use, and also served as a classroom where he taught his art to some promising newbies on the crew.

Ponting was only here for one winter. The second winter, Debenham – formerly his student – had taken over as official photographer, but the space was also used for some physics experiments that had been moved in from the outbuilding which had formerly housed them. The weather was so bad that second winter, and the other location so hard to keep a constant temperature, that in order for them to be tended consistently they needed to be in the main hut.

Because heat rises, the roof of the darkroom was not only used for storage, but by the biologists for incubating bacterial cultures. The biologists’ bench is to the right of the image above, so you can see it was a very convenient location.

On the front of the darkroom is a small table which seems to have been used as auxiliary space to the main central table, where most people did their work. It’s covered with mechanical and electric bits now, but from the photographic record I know it was also used as a writing desk and taxidermy bench.

The interior of the darkroom is, well, dark. Very dark. This was the best I could manage with the nighttime setting on my phone – it actually shows up a lot more than I could make out with my naked eye, even with very good night vision.

Moving to the port side of the hut, now, we get to the laboratory space. This is another of the secret corners which I most wanted to get a sense of. There are more historical photos of this than Wilson and Evans’ bunks, but I didn’t have a proper sense of how it related to the rest of the hut, and especially to Wright and Simpson’s bunks. Well, stand in front of the door of the darkroom, look to your left, and here it is:

To the right are the bunks in question, which I will get to in short order. Against the far wall is the meteorology lab, dominated by the zinc cylinder of the Dines anemometer, which measured wind gusts and was known in the hut as the Blizzometer. Nearest us is the biology and/or medical bench – it was Atkinson’s domain, anyway, and as such is familiar to me on its own, as this photo has hung above my desk for some time now:

If anyone knows what that contraption is with the conical hood, bent pipes, and brass cylinder, I (and the Antarctic Heritage Trust) would really like to know! It’s on the right side of the historical photo and is lying down on the bench in my modern one. (Atch’s microscope, by the way, is now in Dundee at Discovery Point.)

Now, the bunks! As you can see, unlike the other bunks they run parallel to the wardroom, rather than end-on. While Scott’s men were here they would have been hidden behind the pianola and whatever was stacked on top of it, an arrangement which would have given Wright and Simpson an almost private cubicle to live in, with a window to boot. The pianola was given to Rennick as a wedding present in 1914, and the compact library cabinet which was next to it is now at SPRI, so this corner is much more airy than it would have been when the bunks were occupied.

The window was one of my favourite discoveries. I knew there was a window there, because Nelson’s bench covered in well-lit glassware is possibly the most-photographed location in the hut. What I didn’t know, and wasn’t hinted in anything I’d read or seen, was that you could see the meteorological station on top of Wind Vane Hill from the meteorologist’s bunk.

The official guide says that it’s meteorologist Simpson’s bunk on the bottom, and physicist Wright’s on top. During the second winter Wright discovered that his groggy morning headaches were caused by carbon monoxide from the generator in the lab, whose exhaust vent had got snowed up. I couldn’t see well into the top bunk, but the bottom one has a lovely tableau of personal and meteorological items – those blue arcs are, I think, sunshine recorders.

To get a broader view of the space in this corner and the situation of the bunks within it, here is the view from right next to the window, looking down the length of the hut from the other side of the bunks.

Where we are standing now is at Nelson’s biology bench, the aforementioned most photographed. Because of that, I didn’t take any photos of it myself, but we will see the rest of that side of the hut next time, when we wrap up our tour.

[worstjourney]

Dr. George Clarke Simpson

Simpson was from a mercantile family in Manchester – Wikipedia says they ran a department store, but somewhere I picked up the fact that they sold umbrellas, which is a narratively satisfying start for someone who would go on to become an eminent meteorologist.

Simpson nearly joined the Discovery Expedition, but was passed over for another applicant who, in the end, couldn't join.  He went to Lapland instead, and lectured on meteorology at Manchester University for a year before joining the Indian Meteorological Office in Simla.  It was while there that Scott complained to him of the difficulties they were having with the weather data from the Discovery trip: “It is full of inaccuracies and insupportable theories … It's a pity some of your Indian efficiency cannot be imported into the London office.”  He was soon to have exactly that, as Simpson applied for a post as soon as the Terra Nova Expedition was announced and was signed on immediately.

As a professional scientist with an established career, and naturally of a more serious demeanour, Simpson was out of place amongst the more boyish members of the scientific staff, and may not have been thrilled about being nicknamed “Sunny Jim” after a cereal mascot who he resembled.  Nevertheless he applied himself to his post, working closely with Wright in matters of atmospheric ionization, radiation, and the like.

The science of meteorology depends upon an extended period of continuous data collection, so Simpson hardly left the immediate vicinity of the Cape Evans hut once his lab was set up with its wide array of instruments and remote-recording devices.  The only exception was in September of 1911, when he joined Scott, Birdie, and Taff Evans “to stretch our legs” (per Scott) over in the Western Mountains.

It was expected that Simpson would stay on for the duration of the Expedition, but when the Terra Nova came to relieve them in 1912, she brought news of a cholera outbreak at the Met Office in Simla from which Simpson was on leave, which was now short-staffed and needed him back.  As he was already working closely with Wright, and the latter was most familiar with the sensitive scientific equipment, Simpson gave him a crash-course in how to keep the meteorological record going for the second year.  Soon after this, a message came through from Hut Point: Dr. Atkinson, who had been preparing to meet the returning Polar Party with the dog teams, was now needed to save Teddy Evans' life, and could Simpson please send Wright if possible, or else Cherry-Garrard, to take the dogs south in his place?  Simpson sent them both to Hut Point but stressed how much Wright was needed at base for the scientific work, so Cherry was assigned the southern journey.

Simpson was still in India when the world learned of the tragic end of the expedition.  “News of the sad disaster came to India in such dribbles that it was nearly a fortnight before I could really understand what happened.  I could not have imagined that the sad news would have affected me so much.” (Letter to Joseph Kinsey, 1913) He threw himself into figuring out how their experience of the weather could have been so different from what he had forecast, but before he could start serious work on processing the data, the First World War broke out, taking him first to Mesopotamia and then to work with the Board of Munitions.  Like the other scientists he was left to juggle the expedition scientific reports with other work after the war.  When he was finally able to crunch the data into a model of Antarctic weather, it suggested that 1912 was indeed a highly unusual year, which defied the precedent he and Scott had referred to for planning the Pole Journey. Simpson's Meteorological Report was published with the rest in the early 1920s, and he gave a lecture on it shortly after, but then left the Antarctic behind.  He became the longest-serving director of the Met Office and collected quite a list of honours, retiring as Sir George C. Simpson, KCB CBE FRS.

The establishment of automatic weather stations along the route of the Polar Journey has meant a continuous record has been made since the mid-1980s, and astonishingly it has corroborated the models made by Simpson in the 1910s without the aid of computers or satellites and with equipment we now regard as fairly primitive.  It also proves how unusual the weather encountered by the Polar Party was, with only one year up to 2001 returning data like theirs.  “He figured out that they would have made it back in about nine out of ten years.  Turns out, he was a little conservative, it was more like fifteen out of sixteen.” (Dr. Solomon)

If you, too, wanted to be a meteorologist when you were thirteen, or if you're just interested in science and the people who carry it out, I highly recommend looking up Dr Susan Solomon's book The Coldest March, which not only presents the meteorological information in a clear and engaging way (with graphs and all!) but the realities of survival in the Antarctic environment.  It's hard to come away from it without a new perspective on the Polar Party's journey.

 … But because I drafted this character profile in a rush before a big trip, I have drawn mainly from the Channel 4/WNET documentary based on her book, called The Coldest March in the UK and, rather more sensationally, Secrets of the Dead: Tragedy at the Pole in the U.S., where it is available on DVD.

[tealin]

Is that a broken comb on the meteorology desk? Which one had comb-eating hair?

Yes, it is a broken comb.  I suspect it suffered more from a hundred years of cold, damp, possibly being stepped on, etc. than it did from some poor bloke’s hair, but the fact it was put on Simpson’s bunk makes me happy because he did have a bit of a ‘do going on.

[musicveinuk]

Midlands Musician George Simpson Makes Country Debut

Midlands Musician Makes Country Debut @GeorgeSimpsonxx #FindingMyself

After a 2 year hiatus in releasing music, Midlands musician George Simpson is back with new Country single ‘Finding Myself’. A fork in the road during 2015 saw George take time out to recollect his thoughts and take on a new direction in his music. Listening to previous songs, ‘It’s Our Lives’ in particular (Get On This Ride album) hints that something was brewing in George’s compositions – so…

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[musicveinuk]

Moving On with George Simpson

Moving On with George Simpson @Georgesimpsonxx @officialronnies @BBCintroEMids @jason_mraz RT

It’s been over a year since award winning Leicestershire singer/songwriter George Simpson released album ‘Get On This Ride’. Now with a new single released just last week, a tour which includes a night at infamous Jazz club Ronnie Scotts and a Crowd Funding Campaign on the horizon – Musicvein had to sit whirlwind George down for a moment to catch a breath! MV: It’s been over a year since ‘Get On…

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[itunesvndotcom-blog]

George Simpson | Get On This Ride (2015) [iTunes Plus AAC M4A]

New Post has been published on iTunes Collections Team: https://itunesvn.com/53374-george-simpson-get-on-this-ride-2015-itunes-plus-aac-m4a.html

George Simpson | Get On This Ride (2015) [iTunes Plus AAC M4A]

Download here: George Simpson | Get On This Ride (2015) [iTunes Plus AAC M4A]

[ituneszonekm-blog]

George Simpson - The Bottle - Single

George Simpson – The Bottle – Single

The Bottle is the debut single by English singer/songwriter George Simpson. It was released on iTunes on  Jan 05, 2015 via Melton Music Records.

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