Canaries, camouflets, and carbon monoxide: making ‘Proto Man’ in Britain’s tunnelling war 1915–1918

ABSTRACT

Focused mainly on the gas mask, historians of technology have paid little attention to the use of oxygen breathing apparatus in World War I. This article explores how an assemblage of technology, avian life, and experimental physiology resulted in the ‘Proto Man’ – a militarized mine rescuer vital for fighting Britain’s tunnelling war. Wartime mobilization of science pushed the improvement of oxygen equipment and the study of human performance. The success of ‘Proto Man’ was not narrowly limited to technical refinements of equipment or discoveries in physiology. Instead, this article argues for the centrality of the canary as a living gas detector endowing ‘Proto Man’ with more-than-human sensing of carbon monoxide. Easily surpassing chemical testing methods in utility and practicality, the trench canary provided an essential role for the non-human amidst the broad militarization of extreme environments during the twentieth century.

KEYWORDS:

• Britain
• oxygen
• World War I
• avian
• extreme environments

Disclosure statement

No conflict of interest was encountered when writing this article.

Notes

1. Logan, “Mining Notes No. 64.”

2. Synton, “Tunnellers All.”

3. Logan, “Mining Notes No. 64.”

4. Logan, Mine Rescue Work on the Western Front, 4–11.

5. Ball, “The Work of the Miner on the Western Front,” 195–202, 216.

6. Grieve and Newman, Tunnellers; Barrie, War Underground; Barton, Doyle, and Vandewalle, Beneath Flanders Fields; and Leonard, Beneath the Killing Fields.

7. Barton, Doyle, and Vandewalle, Beneath Flanders Fields; Jones, Underground Warfare 1914–1918; Leonard, Beneath the Killing Fields; and Leonard, “Assaulting the Senses.”

8. Rabinbach, The Human Motor.

9. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women; Currier, “Feminist Technological Futures,” 321–38.

10. Heggie, Higher and Colder; Anker, “The Ecological Colonization of Space,” 239–68; Munns, Engineering the Environment; Munns and Nickelsen, Far Beyond the Moon; Aronowsky, “Of Astronauts and Algae,” 359–77; and Bimm, “Anticipating the Astronaut.”

11. Pyne, “Extreme Environments”; Hawkins, “‘Have You Been There?’”; Launius, “Writing the History”; Rozwadowski, “Ocean’s Depths.”

12. Munns and Nickelsen, Far Beyond the Moon, 51–70; Aronowsky, “Of Astronauts and Algae,” 359–77; Bimm, “Anticipating the Astronaut,” 117–68; Matthias, “American Solitude”; and Squire, Undersea Geopolitics, 85–105.

13. Munns and Nickelsen, Far Beyond the Moon, 51–70; and Squire, Undersea Geopolitics, 56–58.

14. Mumford, Technics and Civilization, 69–70.

15. Grieve and Newman, Tunnellers, 12.

16. Institution of Royal Engineers, Work of the Royal Engineers in the European War, 112.

17. Dixon, “Tunneller’s Life.”

18. Andrews, Killing for Coal.

19. Roach, “Diary of Captain Matthew Roach.”

20. Mulqueen, “Diary of Lieutenant FJ Mulqueen.”

21. Bourke, Dismembering the Male; and Serlin, Replaceable You.

22. Smith and Morra, The Prosthetic Impulse, 2–11.

23. Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, “First Report of the Mine Rescue Apparatus Research Committee,” 5–10.

24. Institution of Royal Engineers, Military Mining, 59.

25. Coulthard, “Tunnelling at the Front,” 453.

26. Trounce, Fighting the Boche Underground, 47–54.

27. Trounce, Fighting the Boche Underground, and Barton, Doyle, and Vandewalle, Beneath Flanders Fields, 137–40.

28. Logan, “Accidents Due to Structural Defects of Apparatus.”

29. Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, “First Report,” 28.

30. Logan, “Accidents,” 224.

31. Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, “First Report.”

32. Ibid., 7–19.

33. Ibid., 18.

34. Ibid., 19.

35. Ibid., 26.

36. Ibid., 27.

37. Logan, “Accidents,” 226–27.

38. Logan, Mine Rescue Work, 18–23.

39. Greer, Red Coats, and Wild Birds.

40. Van Dooren, Flight Ways; and van Dooren, The Wake of Crows.

41. Jacobs, Birders of Africa.

42. Burton, “Canaries Beyond the Coal Mine”; and van Burton, “Risking Life and Wing,” 143–59.

43. Illustrated London News, “A Song from Home”; and Illustrated London News, “A Cageful of Canaries Rescued from Ruins in Amiens.”

44. Haldane, “Detection and Estimation of Carbonic Oxide in the Air”; Foster, Clement and Haldane, The Investigation of Mine Air; and Haldane and Douglas, “Testing for Carbon Monoxide,” 267–75.

45. Haldane, Methods of Air Analysis.

46. Buchanan, The Significance of the Pulse Rate in Vertebrate Animals, 497–491.

47. Burton, “Risking Life and Wing,” 147.

48. Ritvo, The Animal Estate; and McShane and Tarr, The Horse in the City.

49. Hevia, Animal Labor and Colonial Warfare.

50. Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto; Haraway, When Species Meet; and Haraway, Staying with the Trouble.

51. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 13–16.

52. Logan, Mine Rescue Work, 18–24.

53. Logan, Mine Rescue Work, 20.

54. Institution of Royal Engineers, Military Mining, 70.

55. Grieve and Newman, Tunnellers, 313.

56. Dixon, “Tunneller’s Life.”

57. Trounce, Fighting the Boche Underground, 50.

58. Dixon, “Tunneller’s Life.”

59. Eagar, “The Training of Officers and Men of the Tunnelling Companies,” 320.

60. Institution of Royal Engineers, Military Mining, 71.

61. Ibid., 66.

62. Logan, Mine Rescue Work, 22.

63. Institution of Royal Engineers, Military Mining, 99.

64. Briggs, “Physical Exertion, Fitness, and Breathing,” 292–318.

65. Briggs, “Results Obtained at the Physical Test Station,” 34–42,

66. National Service Department, “Report by Dr. Briggs.”

67. Briggs, “Results Obtained at the Physical Test Station,” 34.

68. Ibid., 41.

69. Briggs, “Physical Exertion, Fitness and Breathing”; and Zoladz and Grassi, “A ‘Fatigue Threshold’,” 2531–32.

70. Rabinbach, The Human Motor, 275.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Ohio State Mershon Center Ohio State Department of History.