Aeroscopics by Patrick Ellis;

Author:Patrick Ellis;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press

SENSATION SEEKERS

Consider three sets of sensation seekers who found the Aeroscope. A series of news items documented the unusual happenings at the pinnacle of the Aeroscope.6 One was the visit by the blind and deaf author Helen Keller. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that she “was delighted at the experience, enjoying the sensation of the car rising . . . and seeing the many varied sights beneath her through the eyes of Mrs. Macy,” her teacher.7 Although this is evidently not the traditional “viewing” experience of the Aeroscope, one can imagine other sensationalists who, on account of vertigo, keep their eyes closed, and yet still appreciate the occasion. Indeed, Keller’s account speaks to fundamental components of the ride: its gentle somatic appeals, and the variety of views on offer, which would shift throughout its course.

Some merely saw the device and wondered. In 1915, film comedians Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand made a lightly fictionalized documentary for Keystone Studios, Mabel and Fatty Visiting the World’s Fair at San Francisco. Touring the PPIE, the film documents many exhibits at the fair, both nautical (the US Navy battleship Oregon and the miniature yacht harbor) and altitudinal (the “tallest flagpole in the world” and the Tower of Jewels).8 The penultimate shot in the film is of a “night view of the entire fairground.” An intertitle card suggests to the viewer: “Notice the captive aeroplane above the maze of lights.” This “captive aeroplane,” so misnamed after a preexisting English fairground ride, is, of course, the Aeroscope.9 Amid the electrically lit structures of the fair, their contours “sketched” by illumination,10 the crane-like device, framed off-center, twice ascends at an angle, and when reaching its highest point, takes a panorama of the fair that almost slips beyond the frame, before descending. The entire circumrotation on screen takes about ten seconds; in fact, a ride on the Aeroscope took ten minutes for passengers in real time.

The represented speed of the Aeroscope is a puzzle. The only other filmic citation of the device, this time from a newsreel, has the same ten-second rate. This speed discrepancy is not attributable to particularities of frame rate or projection speed. The pace of increase is too great. It is plausible, then, that in its renaming (as “captive aeroplane”) and acceleration, Keystone aimed to fit the Aeroscope into the amusement park genre of the thrill ride; the Aeroscope was, after all, positioned next to a roller coaster. Although this categorization does not fit the gentle pace of this observation ride, it may be indicative of how the Aeroscope was interpreted by passing sensation seekers.

John Henry Goldfrap, author, under the pseudonym Howard Payson, of a popular series of Boy Scout adventure novels, had already directed his characters in separate books to, among other locations, the Arizona desert, the Panama Canal, Mexico, Belgium, and France before bringing them to San Francisco in 1915 for The Boy Scouts at the Panama Pacific Exposition.11 It is evident from the novel that Goldfrap visited the fair, and indeed rode the

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