and then the armed version, which is called reaper. and all the different technologies about it. you see this all the time on the news, and i ve had students now do dissertations about it, about what does it mean that these people are fighting in afghanistan and killing our enemies from air-conditioned, darkened trailers in las vegas? and how do they feel about it? and what do they say about it? and what is their reaction to it? one of my students who just finished his dissertation last summer was an air force fighter pilot, and he went in and did an anthropological study of these remote systems. and none of them actually said what samuel dana green said, but they said very many things that are very, very similar to that. and a few summers ago the air force held a symposium which i was invited to give the keynote for, called the future operator. who are we going to be, they asked themselves. because pilots are no longer the social who have always been the social backbone of
did ericsson picture in his head the bottom of the ship which was underwater, or did he just imagine the part that was on top? very good question. he designed it to be what he called a submarine battery. so the whole conception of the ship was that most of it would be underwater, which allowed the most destructive ways to just sort of flow over the deck and not damage the ship. also, because the turret was there, there wasn t much to shoot at if you were the enemy. so most of the crew he felt were well protected below the water line. nothing about that is necessarily a bad idea. but again, it depends on, you know, the seals between the two decks. there were if you look at this classic cross-section of the ship, it s really two hulls. there s this upper hull which is described as a raft which is wood clad by iron and this lower iron hull which hangs underneath it. and this was really one of the great weak points of this particular monitor. and probably what happened wh
years about the monitor was the work that they ve done here in the museum with children. and in what is now the monitor and pop culture gallery, a few years ago was basically full of children s art about the monitor versus the merrimack battle. and it was just amazing to see how this ship which still speaks to me after i wrote a book about b. it ten years ago and clearly speaks to all the people here in this room still in different ways speaks to children who are learning about it. and you found in these images everything from some kids just drew sailing boats, didn t want to deal with it at all. other kids drew, you know, fiery representations of the battle. one was sort of like jackson pollack, just scribbly mess, but the title said war is messy. and this one i actually published in the book from a young man named austin duch sto who lives here in virginia, just a very, very beautiful simple rendering of the ship where in a sense he really captured ericsson s origi
time. and you know, there s a myth that people say oh, there were 15 there were 50 patentable inventions on the ship. nobody actually went through and counted them. but isaac newton once came on board and said, wow, there must be 50 patentable inventions here. and that number has always kind of come down as the classic number. but there were a lot of very interesting modern pieces. some of them worked better than others. and again, it s possible that the rudder sorry, the anchor compartment, the hass hole in the rudder may have been one of the things that contributed to the flooding and the sinking. and we just heard also there was a new pump installed in the yard period. so there were a lot of new con triechbss, contrivances as they called it at the time. although the question of the speaking tube came earlier. every crew member s account said there was a speaking tube between the pilot house and turret but it was out of commission during the battle. nobody s really clea