Drillers in Doublets
"I don't want to be critical of coal mining, especially where Mike Stearns can hear me."
That was the opening sentence of my first contribution to the 1632 universe, the article "Drillers in Doublets" (Grantville Gazette 4), e-published in 2004. (The 2008 paper edition was "IV" rather than "4.")
This built on research I had done almost a decade earlier. In 1995, I fell down the stairs and broke my leg in several places My daughter wanted to cheer me up by playing games with me. I vaguely remembered having created a board game "Strike it Rich" when I was a kid. Unfortunately, neither my brothers nor I could remember enough of the details to reconstruct it. So I decided to write a computer game on the subject of wildcatting for oil in North America from 1860 to 1939 In my enforced free time (I couldn't go dancing because of the injury) I did library research and programming and came up with a game that could be played over our home network. I continued to make enhancements to the game in 1996-2000.
The manual for that game was the skeleton on which I built the first draft of "Drillers in Doublets."
The same research also led, much later, to my humorous short story, The Doodlebugger, Grantville Gazette 13 (Sept. 2007). You can read a preview here
https://grantvillegazette.com/wp/arti...
(GG13 also includes my article, "The Wooden Wonders of Grantville.")
The story was inspired by several (possibly true) anecdotes I found in petroleum history literature. For those unfamiliar with the term, a "doodlebug" is a divining rod. There's a good discussion of dowsers -- both con artists and the self-deluded -- in Martin Gardner's classic, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.
I was amused to discover that the term has early 17th century roots -- back then, "doodle" as a noun meant a "foolish or frivolous person," and as a verb, "to make a fool of, cheat." (In the 18th century, it was used by the British about the colonials in the then-derogatory song, "Yankee Doodle.")
The premise of the 1632 universe is that a modern town is transported to 17th century Germany, but it is safe to say that while it will change many aspects of life, it will not change human nature.
That was the opening sentence of my first contribution to the 1632 universe, the article "Drillers in Doublets" (Grantville Gazette 4), e-published in 2004. (The 2008 paper edition was "IV" rather than "4.")
This built on research I had done almost a decade earlier. In 1995, I fell down the stairs and broke my leg in several places My daughter wanted to cheer me up by playing games with me. I vaguely remembered having created a board game "Strike it Rich" when I was a kid. Unfortunately, neither my brothers nor I could remember enough of the details to reconstruct it. So I decided to write a computer game on the subject of wildcatting for oil in North America from 1860 to 1939 In my enforced free time (I couldn't go dancing because of the injury) I did library research and programming and came up with a game that could be played over our home network. I continued to make enhancements to the game in 1996-2000.
The manual for that game was the skeleton on which I built the first draft of "Drillers in Doublets."
The same research also led, much later, to my humorous short story, The Doodlebugger, Grantville Gazette 13 (Sept. 2007). You can read a preview here
https://grantvillegazette.com/wp/arti...
(GG13 also includes my article, "The Wooden Wonders of Grantville.")
The story was inspired by several (possibly true) anecdotes I found in petroleum history literature. For those unfamiliar with the term, a "doodlebug" is a divining rod. There's a good discussion of dowsers -- both con artists and the self-deluded -- in Martin Gardner's classic, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.
I was amused to discover that the term has early 17th century roots -- back then, "doodle" as a noun meant a "foolish or frivolous person," and as a verb, "to make a fool of, cheat." (In the 18th century, it was used by the British about the colonials in the then-derogatory song, "Yankee Doodle.")
The premise of the 1632 universe is that a modern town is transported to 17th century Germany, but it is safe to say that while it will change many aspects of life, it will not change human nature.
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