HISTORICAL CHARACTERS

Several historical figures appear in this book in scenes as characters. The following sketches provide a look at their actual lives and accomplishments.

Robert Todd Lincoln

Robert Todd Lincoln was the only one of Abraham Lincoln’s three sons to survive to adulthood, but he established a reputation as a gifted lawyer with a head for politics. Lincoln served as Secretary of War from 1881 through 1885 under President Garfield. He was appointed Minister to the Court of St. James in 1889 by President Harrison and served in that capacity until 1893, after which he returned to his private law practice.

Fairfax Leighton Cartwright

Historically, Fairfax Cartwright published his three-volume satirical novel, Olga Zanelli, in 1890 but, upon urgent advice of his friends, quickly bought back and destroyed almost every one of the 1500 printed copies. He held a variety of diplomatic posts of increasing responsibility, enjoying success in all of them. In 1898 he married the charming and vivacious daughter of an Italian senator and when he was appointed ambassador to Austria-Hungary in 1908, he and his wife turned the British embassy into the most fashionable in Vienna, hosting many gala balls. It was said that on one occasion, when Mrs Cartwright was dancing with the Austrian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador attempted to cut in, a feud developed between the two men which nearly had international repercussions. Nevertheless, Cartwright probably came closer than any man alive to preventing World War I, having secretly negotiated a separation of Austria-Hungary from its German alliance in return for an international loan to underwrite the modernization of their armed forces. Unfortunately the loan negotiations collapsed and the rest is history.

Konstantin Dumba

As Franz Deym, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador to the United Kingdom, historically was not assassinated in 1889, Konstantin Dumba was not recalled from his posting in St Petersburg. He went on to a series of diplomatic assignments, culminating in his appointment as Austro-Hungarian ambassador to the United States of America in 1913, becoming the last man to hold that post. In late 1915 Dumba was charged with espionage, having been implicated in a plot to sabotage US armaments production. Although the US was not yet at war, its sympathies were clear and the output of its industry supported only the Triple Entente powers. Dumba was expelled and he was not replaced. There is no evidence that, in his earlier posting to the United Kingdom, he even met Fairfax Cartwright, let alone was involved in a romantic rivalry with him. Nor is there evidence he was not.

Lord Kelvin (Doctor William Thomson)

Thomson was a successful engineer and inventor as well as a respected professor and lecturer. He is best known for his work in thermodynamics, his recognition that heat was a reflection of movement, and therefore there was a bottom limit to temperature (“absolute zero”) where all motion, even at the most basic atomic level, stopped. He was also a pioneer in the unification of all of physics under the common principle of energy and in developing the Vortex Theory that an atom was simply a vortex in the aether. Although the Vortex Theory is all but forgotten today, work on it resulted in mathematical Knot Theory which remains an important tool and field of study.

Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann

Boltzmann was a visionary Austrian physicist best-known for his Kinetic Theory which provided a statistically-based description of thermodynamics. The theory relied upon the existence of atoms and molecules as the building blocks of matter, at a time when their existence was widely rejected by the physics community (but as widely accepted in chemistry). He was given to alternating bouts of intense activity followed by depression, almost certainly a product of bipolar disorder. He frequently became discouraged by the opposition to his theories in the scientific community, and committed suicide by hanging in 1906. Most of his theories were vindicated by the work of Einstein, Perrin, and others, with the main breakthrough (the confirmation of the values of Avagadro’s number and Boltzmann’s constant) coming only two years after his death.

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HISTORICAL FIGURES MENTIONED

Several other historical figures are mentioned in the story, and have greater or lesser importance to its unfolding, but do not actually appear in scenes in this book (although some do in other Space: 1889 stories). They are: