Long Fuse, Big Bang by Eric Haseltine

Author:Eric Haseltine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books

WHERE ART, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY MEET: FERREN’S TIME MACHINES

Ten-year-old Bran Ferren decided to humor his father. An abstract expressionist artist, the elder Ferren wanted to expose his only child to the world of architecture. So he’d taken Bran to Rome in the summer of 1963 to show off the Forum and classics like the Colosseum. But Bran was a technology enthusiast who was more interested in looking at TV and radio antennas on building roofs, than at the buildings themselves. Old buildings were . . . well . . . old. Bran was excited by new things.

For that reason Bran only agreed to go inside the Pantheon out of politeness. The round building was very different from others he had just been dragged through, but it was still old. “Borrrring,” thought Bran. “Borrrring.” Then Bran noticed the ceiling. From the outside, the Pantheon looked like a lot of other classical buildings—Corinthian columns supporting a triangular attic. But the rear of the pantheon was circular, topped by a domed roof with a large hole, called an oculus, in its center. A shaft of sunlight streamed through the oculus, providing the room’s only illumination. Bran was curious.

“How old is this?” he asked his father.

“More than eighteen hundred years,” came the reply.

Bran tried again. “No, I mean the roof. That must be much newer.”

Bran couldn’t understand how ancient architects, with only rudimentary knowledge of mechanics, could have built an enormous domed roof with a large hole in its center. Bran’s father smiled.

“The whole building was built at the same time.”

He went on to tell Bran that the Romans had used forced perspective to make the ceiling appear much more curved than it actually was and had constructed the roof from poured concrete. The concrete was a special mix, composed of lightweight but incredibly strong volcanic pumice.

Bran was flabbergasted. He’d thought of concrete, especially the lightweight variety, as a modern invention. And it was common knowledge that artists didn’t discover forced perspective until the Renaissance. Clearly he had to reexamine some of his fundamental assumptions.

The most important assumption that Bran reevaluated that day was that art and science were separate entities. It was obvious to Bran that considerable architectural science had gone into the Pantheon’s artistic design, not to mention a deep understanding of light and human perception. With the shaft of sunlight that filled the Pantheon’s interior, the ancient Romans had mastered a kind of alchemy, turning insubstantial light into a solid object that was as much a part of the Pantheon as its walls.

When Bran returned home to Manhattan’s Upper West Side, he couldn’t get the idea of light as a solid object out of his head. Light was really cool. Light was something you could play with, mold, shape, and create exciting new things with. Bran began to tinker with light. He learned how to use a camera and to develop film. In high school Bran started up a business, Synchronetics, that designed lighting for rock bands and live theater.

But Bran was never interested in designing show lighting the way other people had before him.

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