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The Bell notes: A journey from physics to metaphysics
Book by Young, Arthur M.
205 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
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January 13, 2013
Arthur Middleton Young was a friend of mine from around 1970 to his death in 1995, at the age of nearly 90 years old. At a party which we both attended, I, having heard of his giving a presentation of his metaphysical ideas perhaps a year before, glibly asked him if I could make a film "about his ideas". He was enthusiastic about this, but it took about six months for me to realize that he had been completely serious, asking me why I hadn't gotten in touch with him sooner when I finally met with him at his country house, just north of Downingtown, PA where, coincidentally a town where I now live.
He was well-known, at least in the aeronautic field, for having invented the Bell 47 helicopter, which was the first commercially-licensed helicopter in the world, and is instantly recognizable for its bubble front and possessing the elegance of a mechanical dragonfly. It was made a part of the collective memory by M*A*S*H and the opening of Fellini's "La Dolce Vita". (One hangs in a stairwell at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City).
However, the story behind the invention of the Bell 47 is even more fascinating than one would expect, because it was not Arthur's prime objective, per se, but a means to an end. When he went to Princeton, he studied the quantum mechanics, at around the time it was being formulated (he graduated in 1928). But, after graduation he realized that he wanted to make an invention that would give him the wealth to be independent to pursue his true interest, which might be called "metaphysics". At the time, radio was all the rage, but he decided that there were so many others working in radio that the probability of his making a major contribution was considerably diminished. Arthur realized that he had to work on a problem that had defied solution, but that was not being worked on by many other individuals, thus giving him the opportunity to make a major contribution. It was, of course, well known that Leonardo di Vinci had designed a helicopter, whose rotor was shaped as a corkscrew, but models of Leonardo's design were built and were shown to not work. Arthur settled upon the helicopter problem as his means to the end to achieve a state of intellectual freedom by freeing himself from being a wage slave.
Arthur approached the problem with a series of models—seven main variations—that gradually articulated and solved the sub-problems of helicopter design, the main being the problem of achieving stability. (This he documented by having 16mm films shot to document his progress.) His models had a rotor-span of about 6 feet and were powered by an electric motor whose power was supplied by a cord that dangled from the model, bound together with the wires that carried signals to control the model. The form of the models was circular, with four thin, vertical paddles to prevent the torque of the rotors from spinning the model, by simply providing some air resistance. (This function was later realized with the small tail rotor at the end of the boom extending behind the cockpit.)
The first ones hardly made it off the ground before tipping over, sometimes breaking the hand-made, wooden rotors. The later models would reach a certain altitude, but would go into what is called "fugoid" instability, wherein the model would swing from side to side more and more violently, until it tipped over and drove itself down to the ground. But, over a period of years, roughly through the 1930s and early 1940s, each problem that became evident was solved. The final problem, stability, was solved by a much smaller two-bladed rotor, with weights on each end, to make it function as an artificial horizon by its gyroscopic momentum, sitting astride the main rotors, connected to them with a non-intuitive linkage that had the effect of making the main rotors absolutely stable.
Then, there was of course the problem of being able to move the helicopter horizontally. This was finally accomplished by differentially changing the angle of the rotors as they made their journey around and around. That is, the blades were twisted to one angle in the back and at another angle in the front (using what is called a swash plate with cams to change the angle of each rotor. This had the effect of changing the lift of each rotor depending on where it was during its rotation. In his final film, Arthur is seen flying his model through a stiff breeze to land it on a target about 40 feet from his barn, using what is essentially a joystick controller.
At this point (around 1942, I believe) he found that Bell was interested in building a full-scale prototype at a plant near Buffalo, NY. This process was a whole leap in Arthur's education, and the risks that were implicit in this enterprise became apparent when a test pilot was killed. Arthur, shaken by this, took to testing tethered versions of the prototype himself.
The origin of the bubble front is worthy of retelling, because it is so indicative of Arthur's playful inventiveness. It was realized that a huge field of view would be an asset to both pilot and co-pilot or companion. It suddenly occurred to Arthur that the way to make the cockpit enclosure was to simply take a large piece of Plexiglas and put it on a large flat surface, heat it until it was soft, and then introduce air under pressure through a hole in the surface, which had the effect of blowing it up into a large bubble, as the edges were all sealed. The doors were simply cut out of the bubble shape once it was formed, and it was similarly fitted to the frame.
By this time, the tail rotor and the boom that had to extend it far enough away from the central mast to counteract the torque of the main rotors was realized and built. Instead of covering it with a thin aluminum shell, the boom, with its profusion of tetrahedrons to make it as stiff as possible, Arthur decided that since the helicopter's top speed was nowhere near that of a airplane, such a covering would just be useless added weight. The same pragmatism was applied to the "landing gear"; because the helicopter could be put down on a dime, wheels were adjudged to be a similarly useless addition, and the famous skids, used for holding stretchers of the wounded during the Korean War, were used instead.
When it came to test the last prototypes, it was decided to go for a helicopter distance record. But this required and immense load of fuel, far more than the tanks were designed to hold. Arthur's maverick solution was to pressurize the tanks with compressed air so their flat ends bulged out out on both ends, far exceeding their nominal pressure rating in the process. However, this allowed extra fuel to be added, which resulted in a non-stop flight from Buffalo, NY to a Bell plant in Texas—a record that stood for years.
Arthur also used to like to relate what he had learned about large organizations with this story: When the helicopter was in the assembly line, having been approved by the FAA, some had to be outfitted with a special grease to withstand arctic temperatures. Yet, as irony would have it, when these specially-prepared machines made it down to inspectors, they were rejected as not having the correct grease, so they were re-greased, needlessly. This and other such experiences, along with the speed with which he was able to design his models by himself, convinced him that "less is more", that the smallest teams were the most effective teams. I believe that the Bell assembly lines were eventually organized along these lines with a tangible increase in output and higher quality.
As the power plant and gearbox had to be both as light as possible and completely reliable, as a gliding emergency landing, which is at least conceivable in a winged aircraft, in a helicopter is all but impossible. The relatively tiny engine (the entire craft seems very small up close), forming a shaft directly under the main rotors, was proven to be extremely reliable when a ball bearing that had somehow escaped its track fell right into the engine, and simply fell right through it and emerged from the bottom, falling to the ground (the craft was on the ground at the time). The engine and all its reduction gears and other components were completely unfazed.
During the 1930s, another man was working on the auto-gyro, essentially an airplane with a conventional propeller but with unpowered rotors instead of wings to provide lift. It's advantage over a conventional airplane was that it could take off and land on much shorter runways. When Arthur filed for a patent, it was challenged, and there was a monumental legal battle over the use of rotors, which finally boiled down to Arthur's winning the patent for the novel artificial horizon that made his helicopter so stable. This finally achieved his initial, providing him with the wherewithal to pursue his unconventional studies into all sorts of unconventional phenomena.
This took the form of a quest to find savants and mentors in the occult, and involved considerable researches into astrology, comparative religions and even Scientology (which he ultimately rejected), as well as a host of other arcane phenomena. Although his qualifications as an inventor were beyond reproach, Arthur's Don Quixote-like jousting with conventional science alienated him from the mainstream, to say the least. His intention, I believe, was to synthesize the old and discredited pre-sciences of astrology and alchemy, the unexplained (of which there are plenty of examples), the universality of certain themes of many religious traditions with the General Theory of
Relativity and the quantum mechanics, the mainstream of modern science. His belief seemed to be that scientists were essentially close-minded and close-mouthed about what they could not explain.
Arthur's first response to this impulse was realized with the publication of "The Theory of Process", which stimulated much interest among small groups across the country. Although to some its premise may seem contrived, to others it offered a New Age synthesis that at least attempted to unite and relate the varieties of human experience, from religion to a uniting of the principles of quantum mechanics with the seemingly predestined, billions-of-years-process of the development of human consciousness and charting the road forward from this to higher levels of consciousness.
In the Theory of Process, this takes the form of a 7 by 7 grid of 7 main stages of development, which each contain within themselves 7 stages that in some ways each anticipate the 7 major levels. Arthur sees in the universe, and in many religious explanations from all periods of history, a gigantic metaphor of a decent from absolute freedom to the absolutely material world of everyday existence (what is tangible)and then, as almost preordained by the 7 sub-stages, a gradual, progressive return to freedom of action, now not just a potential, immaterial freedom, but a freedom that animates matter from within, from the growth embodied by plant life, to the wide-ranging freedom of animal life, and finally, the liberation of consciousness itself, which then turns outward to regard the universe that gave birth to it.
Even such scientists as the physicist John Wheeler have expressed a similar view, in that it almost seems as if the point of the universe is to become conscious of itself (though Wheeler's thoughts about the particulars of Arthur Young's views are unknown). So, from a basically contentious view of the narrowness of vision of science and scientists, Arthur has landed remarkably close to the musings of a major scientist, who is not alone in attributing certain characteristics of the universe to factors that are essentially indescribable. (Think of Albert Einstein's discomfort with the seemingly random phenomena of quantum mechanics [which is, in many respects the most accurate theory about the exceedingly small aspects of the universe yet invented] in his statement that he didn't think God played dice with the universe.)
But think of the sea-change of ideas about consciousness itself in the past 60 years or so: In the 1950s consciousness was thought to be the province only of the human mind whereas now signs of consciousness are recognized in many species of animals and even plants. Perhaps this is because science itself has, in fact, become far less dogmatic, far more open to surprising notions such as dark matter and dark energy account for the great majority of the universe as we understand it. Perhaps it is because of the interpenetration of East and West.
And, looking at it another way, a man over 2500 years ago essentially divined the same concept, which lives on to this day as Buddhism.
Arthur Young's life-long interest in astrology is used to organize 12 fundamental mathematical descriptions of the world into a meaningful pattern in "The Geometry of Meaning".
Arthur gives a glimpse into his personal transformations during the development of the Bell 47 in the book titled "The Bell Notes". There are many ways that Young is a Jungian at heart, seeing an intimate connection between his inner consciousness and the phenomenal world about him.
Despite all of this, Arthur did not at all take himself seriously, as readily capable of admitting what he didn't know as asserting a possible interpretation of what seemed unknowable. Most of all, he was a gracious man, with a quick wit, a wonderful sense of humor and a genuine love of those whom he mentored towards a more open mind.
He was well-known, at least in the aeronautic field, for having invented the Bell 47 helicopter, which was the first commercially-licensed helicopter in the world, and is instantly recognizable for its bubble front and possessing the elegance of a mechanical dragonfly. It was made a part of the collective memory by M*A*S*H and the opening of Fellini's "La Dolce Vita". (One hangs in a stairwell at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City).
However, the story behind the invention of the Bell 47 is even more fascinating than one would expect, because it was not Arthur's prime objective, per se, but a means to an end. When he went to Princeton, he studied the quantum mechanics, at around the time it was being formulated (he graduated in 1928). But, after graduation he realized that he wanted to make an invention that would give him the wealth to be independent to pursue his true interest, which might be called "metaphysics". At the time, radio was all the rage, but he decided that there were so many others working in radio that the probability of his making a major contribution was considerably diminished. Arthur realized that he had to work on a problem that had defied solution, but that was not being worked on by many other individuals, thus giving him the opportunity to make a major contribution. It was, of course, well known that Leonardo di Vinci had designed a helicopter, whose rotor was shaped as a corkscrew, but models of Leonardo's design were built and were shown to not work. Arthur settled upon the helicopter problem as his means to the end to achieve a state of intellectual freedom by freeing himself from being a wage slave.
Arthur approached the problem with a series of models—seven main variations—that gradually articulated and solved the sub-problems of helicopter design, the main being the problem of achieving stability. (This he documented by having 16mm films shot to document his progress.) His models had a rotor-span of about 6 feet and were powered by an electric motor whose power was supplied by a cord that dangled from the model, bound together with the wires that carried signals to control the model. The form of the models was circular, with four thin, vertical paddles to prevent the torque of the rotors from spinning the model, by simply providing some air resistance. (This function was later realized with the small tail rotor at the end of the boom extending behind the cockpit.)
The first ones hardly made it off the ground before tipping over, sometimes breaking the hand-made, wooden rotors. The later models would reach a certain altitude, but would go into what is called "fugoid" instability, wherein the model would swing from side to side more and more violently, until it tipped over and drove itself down to the ground. But, over a period of years, roughly through the 1930s and early 1940s, each problem that became evident was solved. The final problem, stability, was solved by a much smaller two-bladed rotor, with weights on each end, to make it function as an artificial horizon by its gyroscopic momentum, sitting astride the main rotors, connected to them with a non-intuitive linkage that had the effect of making the main rotors absolutely stable.
Then, there was of course the problem of being able to move the helicopter horizontally. This was finally accomplished by differentially changing the angle of the rotors as they made their journey around and around. That is, the blades were twisted to one angle in the back and at another angle in the front (using what is called a swash plate with cams to change the angle of each rotor. This had the effect of changing the lift of each rotor depending on where it was during its rotation. In his final film, Arthur is seen flying his model through a stiff breeze to land it on a target about 40 feet from his barn, using what is essentially a joystick controller.
At this point (around 1942, I believe) he found that Bell was interested in building a full-scale prototype at a plant near Buffalo, NY. This process was a whole leap in Arthur's education, and the risks that were implicit in this enterprise became apparent when a test pilot was killed. Arthur, shaken by this, took to testing tethered versions of the prototype himself.
The origin of the bubble front is worthy of retelling, because it is so indicative of Arthur's playful inventiveness. It was realized that a huge field of view would be an asset to both pilot and co-pilot or companion. It suddenly occurred to Arthur that the way to make the cockpit enclosure was to simply take a large piece of Plexiglas and put it on a large flat surface, heat it until it was soft, and then introduce air under pressure through a hole in the surface, which had the effect of blowing it up into a large bubble, as the edges were all sealed. The doors were simply cut out of the bubble shape once it was formed, and it was similarly fitted to the frame.
By this time, the tail rotor and the boom that had to extend it far enough away from the central mast to counteract the torque of the main rotors was realized and built. Instead of covering it with a thin aluminum shell, the boom, with its profusion of tetrahedrons to make it as stiff as possible, Arthur decided that since the helicopter's top speed was nowhere near that of a airplane, such a covering would just be useless added weight. The same pragmatism was applied to the "landing gear"; because the helicopter could be put down on a dime, wheels were adjudged to be a similarly useless addition, and the famous skids, used for holding stretchers of the wounded during the Korean War, were used instead.
When it came to test the last prototypes, it was decided to go for a helicopter distance record. But this required and immense load of fuel, far more than the tanks were designed to hold. Arthur's maverick solution was to pressurize the tanks with compressed air so their flat ends bulged out out on both ends, far exceeding their nominal pressure rating in the process. However, this allowed extra fuel to be added, which resulted in a non-stop flight from Buffalo, NY to a Bell plant in Texas—a record that stood for years.
Arthur also used to like to relate what he had learned about large organizations with this story: When the helicopter was in the assembly line, having been approved by the FAA, some had to be outfitted with a special grease to withstand arctic temperatures. Yet, as irony would have it, when these specially-prepared machines made it down to inspectors, they were rejected as not having the correct grease, so they were re-greased, needlessly. This and other such experiences, along with the speed with which he was able to design his models by himself, convinced him that "less is more", that the smallest teams were the most effective teams. I believe that the Bell assembly lines were eventually organized along these lines with a tangible increase in output and higher quality.
As the power plant and gearbox had to be both as light as possible and completely reliable, as a gliding emergency landing, which is at least conceivable in a winged aircraft, in a helicopter is all but impossible. The relatively tiny engine (the entire craft seems very small up close), forming a shaft directly under the main rotors, was proven to be extremely reliable when a ball bearing that had somehow escaped its track fell right into the engine, and simply fell right through it and emerged from the bottom, falling to the ground (the craft was on the ground at the time). The engine and all its reduction gears and other components were completely unfazed.
During the 1930s, another man was working on the auto-gyro, essentially an airplane with a conventional propeller but with unpowered rotors instead of wings to provide lift. It's advantage over a conventional airplane was that it could take off and land on much shorter runways. When Arthur filed for a patent, it was challenged, and there was a monumental legal battle over the use of rotors, which finally boiled down to Arthur's winning the patent for the novel artificial horizon that made his helicopter so stable. This finally achieved his initial, providing him with the wherewithal to pursue his unconventional studies into all sorts of unconventional phenomena.
This took the form of a quest to find savants and mentors in the occult, and involved considerable researches into astrology, comparative religions and even Scientology (which he ultimately rejected), as well as a host of other arcane phenomena. Although his qualifications as an inventor were beyond reproach, Arthur's Don Quixote-like jousting with conventional science alienated him from the mainstream, to say the least. His intention, I believe, was to synthesize the old and discredited pre-sciences of astrology and alchemy, the unexplained (of which there are plenty of examples), the universality of certain themes of many religious traditions with the General Theory of
Relativity and the quantum mechanics, the mainstream of modern science. His belief seemed to be that scientists were essentially close-minded and close-mouthed about what they could not explain.
Arthur's first response to this impulse was realized with the publication of "The Theory of Process", which stimulated much interest among small groups across the country. Although to some its premise may seem contrived, to others it offered a New Age synthesis that at least attempted to unite and relate the varieties of human experience, from religion to a uniting of the principles of quantum mechanics with the seemingly predestined, billions-of-years-process of the development of human consciousness and charting the road forward from this to higher levels of consciousness.
In the Theory of Process, this takes the form of a 7 by 7 grid of 7 main stages of development, which each contain within themselves 7 stages that in some ways each anticipate the 7 major levels. Arthur sees in the universe, and in many religious explanations from all periods of history, a gigantic metaphor of a decent from absolute freedom to the absolutely material world of everyday existence (what is tangible)and then, as almost preordained by the 7 sub-stages, a gradual, progressive return to freedom of action, now not just a potential, immaterial freedom, but a freedom that animates matter from within, from the growth embodied by plant life, to the wide-ranging freedom of animal life, and finally, the liberation of consciousness itself, which then turns outward to regard the universe that gave birth to it.
Even such scientists as the physicist John Wheeler have expressed a similar view, in that it almost seems as if the point of the universe is to become conscious of itself (though Wheeler's thoughts about the particulars of Arthur Young's views are unknown). So, from a basically contentious view of the narrowness of vision of science and scientists, Arthur has landed remarkably close to the musings of a major scientist, who is not alone in attributing certain characteristics of the universe to factors that are essentially indescribable. (Think of Albert Einstein's discomfort with the seemingly random phenomena of quantum mechanics [which is, in many respects the most accurate theory about the exceedingly small aspects of the universe yet invented] in his statement that he didn't think God played dice with the universe.)
But think of the sea-change of ideas about consciousness itself in the past 60 years or so: In the 1950s consciousness was thought to be the province only of the human mind whereas now signs of consciousness are recognized in many species of animals and even plants. Perhaps this is because science itself has, in fact, become far less dogmatic, far more open to surprising notions such as dark matter and dark energy account for the great majority of the universe as we understand it. Perhaps it is because of the interpenetration of East and West.
And, looking at it another way, a man over 2500 years ago essentially divined the same concept, which lives on to this day as Buddhism.
Arthur Young's life-long interest in astrology is used to organize 12 fundamental mathematical descriptions of the world into a meaningful pattern in "The Geometry of Meaning".
Arthur gives a glimpse into his personal transformations during the development of the Bell 47 in the book titled "The Bell Notes". There are many ways that Young is a Jungian at heart, seeing an intimate connection between his inner consciousness and the phenomenal world about him.
Despite all of this, Arthur did not at all take himself seriously, as readily capable of admitting what he didn't know as asserting a possible interpretation of what seemed unknowable. Most of all, he was a gracious man, with a quick wit, a wonderful sense of humor and a genuine love of those whom he mentored towards a more open mind.
February 18, 2009
This man founded the Institute for the Study of Consciousness and was the inventor of the Bell Helicopter. The Bell Notes is a memoir based on his journals during that period of time. It is a wonderful book for anyone who is very bright and feels a lack of connection to mainstream society. Brilliant people have often lived very much outside the box and their lives seem quite similar to one anothers regardless of what culture or time period they live in.
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