My Voyage to the Moon

by Isaac Mathieu Crommelin

Isaac Mathieu Crommelin (1730-1815)

Isaac Crommelin was a 'Renaissance Man' with a lively imagination and a huge interest in the arts, science and history.

He wrote this story as a chapter in his book, Mes Radotages [My Ramblings - the Art of Killing Time] which he published in 1809 when he was 79 years old. In his senior years he suffered from gout which interrupted his sleep so he published this book to give others who suffered similar chronic pain something to read when sleep eluded them!
Isaac's memoirs reveal that he bore an uncanny resemblance to Benjamin Franklin.

Isaac converses with "Genie", his wise guardian angel and mentor.
This illustration by Isaac M. Crommelin appeared in Vol. 1
of his Encyclopedia for young people, published in 1775.

Genie Appears Before Me

     I renewed acquaintance with my Genie after a separation of a few months. The sun was already on the other side of the world. My eyelids were about to close. My thoughts were wandering; my senses were drowsy; finally I was about to taste the sweetness of a quiet sleep when an unusual sensation suddenly caused my eyes to open wide with amazement. And what do I see? A radiant figure full of grace and majesty.
     "Who are you?" I cried in a trembling voice but without fear.
     "A being who is devoted to you."
     I remained motionless but the phantom took my hand and looked at me with a tender smile.
     "Why are you trembling?" he asked. "Do I look like an evil Genie? Here, look at my wings - they're made of feathers. Have no fear... There, that's better. Now your shoulders are calm. I know that you like going on trips and it is I who conducted you to Olympia, to Cythera, to the house of Mort at Lemnos and Paphos."
     "Mmm. You speak as though those voyages were real. I always believed they were nothing but a dream... How could I doubt it? I go to bed at 10 o'clock and wake up at seven. There's nothing that would indicate that I had been absent very long because I didn't go anywhere for 9 hours, or thereabouts, amongst the clouds, etc."
     "You think that way because you crawl along at the bottom of your atmosphere like a crab in the water. In nine hours, my friend, you and I made a voyage of three years, eight months and 15 days!"
     "I don't recall anything like that."
     "OK, listen to me..."

The Conversation

     Our conversation went something like this...
     Genie said that everything that can be measured is infinitely divisible. For example time, space, matter, etc. can be divided into a year, a day, a yard, a league, a glass of water or a great lake.
     "In that respect an apple and the world have much in common, don't you think?"
     "No, but that's what philosphers seem to think. It follows, however, that the only difference between the biggest and smallest things is size."
     "Good reasoning! Let's see what you know about logic. What is it that really needs to be considered here?"
     "Scale and Comparisons... If objects to be compared suddenly change without our being aware of it, it is quite possible that we draw wrong conclusions about them. For example, I go to sleep with the intention of doing something the next day. I sleep for eight hours in deep slumber, then I wake up by an alarm clock. I rise to execute my project without realizing that the thing is no longer possible. Perhaps a sleep as long as that of Epimenide may have resulted in a similar error. He must have linked the intentions of yesterday with his expectations of what's possible today."
     "I applaud your way of reasoning," said the Genie, "but allow me to develop my ideas. You will understand if you listen to me closely... It takes you about sixty minutes (1 hour) to walk a league (4 km, 2.5 miles). You judge a league travelled by reference to space and time, or by the addition of various marker posts at regular intervals that you come across. But if a cannon ball is fired off, it would see in twelve seconds the same things that you would encounter in one hour. Now you probably think that a cannon ball that was blasted off by gunpowder has a high rate of speed. Not at all! It goes so slowly (compared to another substance found in nature) that it can be regarded as standing still."
     "Explain that to me," I inquired.
     "Very well... Light traverses thirty-two million miles in eight minutes, and the cannon ball in the same time interval can travel perhaps eighteen miles. [The speed of light is known, even demonstrated, by the eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter. Since this heavenly body describes a circle larger than our own, its perigee and apogee have for a difference, in distance, the entire diameter of the circle described by the annual revolution of the Earth. In other words, these eclipses at its apogee arrive sixteen minutes later than when they occur at Perigee.]

How the Speed of Light Was Calculated in 1676 In 1676 the Danish astronomer Ole Rømer compared the apparent duration of Io's orbits as Earth moved towards Jupiter (F to G) and as Earth moved away from Jupiter (L to K) to calculate a rough value for the speed of light. Roemer obtained a value of: c = 2.14 x 10+8 meters per second This is 70% of today’s value: c = 3.00 x 10+8 meters per second

Therefore light, which is a physical thing, travels almost eighteen hundred thousand times faster than a cannon ball - 1,800,000 times!"
"Yes, indeed, my friend, and I conclude that the speed of the cannon ball relative to light is twenty times slower than the speed of a snail relative to the cannon ball!"
"You have my utmost attention," replied Genie.
"But, my goodness, tell me where you plan to take us?"
"I plan to give you an education... If I were to transport you in two minutes from Saint Germain at Paris, and if, in this interval your watch suddenly jumped ahead 108 minutes without you being aware of it; and if you take note of the same intermediate objects, not knowing what was propelling you forward, but relating all things relative to time and space, wouldn't you interpret the passage of two minutes as having taken two hours?"
"I really don't know, but I know what you mean."
"You will understand better soon. Yes, my good friend, we have travelled faster than a cannon ball when every hour became a second. In other words, the nine hours of your presumed slumber consisted of 31400 seconds which, converted to hours, produced 1350 days. That's exactly the amount of time we spent together [in Isaac's last dream journey]"
"But a second and an hour can't be mistaken for each other!"
"You forget that there can be as many divisions within a minute as there are in a year! Give me your strict attention. It would be possible for God to make the world and everything which depends on it, one thousand times smaller without you even noticing any change."
"I don't know if I agree with that..."

How to Speed Up the Passage of Time In conceiving of a universe in which time and space were contracted proportionately, Isaac Crommelin was envisioning something like time lapse and high speed photography which can display life in slow motion or at high speed. No doubt Isaac would have been intrigued by the possibilities of video cameras and motion pictures to illustrate his ideas!

Suppositions

Suppose that God made the earth rotate a thousand times more quickly, and also in its annual orbital revolutions (diurnal motion).

Let's assume that He also made things a thousand times smaller. All objects were reduced in the same proportion.

Now pretend that all instruments that mark time were sped up by a thousand times.

Let's suppose that all these changes were carried out during your sleep.

"When you woke up, do you think you would notice any change since all points of reference would have been similarly scaled down and sped up? Of course you would need a thousand times less stuff for clothing to get dressed, but you would also be a thousand times smaller. You would eat a thousand times less food but your bread, dishes and all the rest would also be a thousand times less voluminous. To travel one league a thousand times smaller it would take you the same number of steps. Furthermore, less than ten toises [toise=fathom=6 feet] have become four leagues. This small distance will tire you out as though it had been 9600 toises at present."
"I understand what you're saying," I replied. "Instead of living 80 years, I could do all that living within a month and still believe that I enjoyed a long lifespan!"
"This is exactly what happens to the may-fly which is born, grows up, goes about its business, ages, and then dies within a day.
"Are there any animals whose lifespan is as fleeting as that of the may-fly?"
"The subtle changes which I am about to mention would be visible to those who embrace all of nature. But, of course, a man wouldn't be able to perceive it because..."
"Just a minute!" I interjected, wishing to raise an objection. "Excuse my interruption, but in order to do such a thing you would have to..."
"I'll also interrupt you to avoid having to explain. I know what you're going to say, and I would respond with another supposition that I have omitted. Suppose the fluid in the nervous system acted a thousand times more rapidly. Then our movements would also follow this proportion and we would do all the same things but in a thousand times less time. This is what happened in your journey with me. On the earth you passed only nine hours but, I repeat, you and I were together for 1350 days. Now I would like to propose a second trip."
"What! On the same basis? I am mortal, but you are ephemeral. Where shall we go?" Then I noticed the moon shining down upon us with its silvery disk. "To know more about that, I would willingly go on another trip!"
"I hear you!" said my genie. "Let's go to this astral body. You won't have to make any preparations."
"Oh, sure! If I only had a chair like that of Cyrano de Bergerac!"

Cyrano de Bergerac in the contraption that got him to the moon in 1657...

"What! You seem to lack confidence! I like you enough to be offended by that remark! Besides, what you wish for is impossible. The chair you mentioned no longer exists. It was burned up by Cyrano after he used it in one of his excursions. The fool was able to ascend only a little more than 78,000 leagues into the sky. For him to reach the moon he would have had to go another 11999 leagues, 2368 toises, 3 lignes! It follows that his description of this astral body is just as phoney as the accounts of travellers who mistook their visions for real objects. And then they declared them to be true without fear of being considered crazy! So climb onto my wing. You won't need any special clothing."
My smoking habit caused me to automatically reach for my lighter, tobacco, and my pipe. I obeyed the Genie, and in a flash I found myself on a cloud with the first rays of dawn beginning to break.

The Aerostat

"Your desire for comfort is known to me," said my guide. "That's why I decided to construct a balloon in which we can travel comfortably in the air and even through space. I'm able to steer it because I have ways that ordinary people don't have."
"Steering such a thing seems quite absurd to me."
"Absurd? A ship and a bird only prove to me that a balloon can be steered."
"What! As for me, I take the bird and a ship to be proof that this isn't possible. In a ship there are two forces, one pulls (wave resistance) and the other pushes (wind in the sails). On earth the balloon experiences the same two forces."
"Nevertheless a boat gets steered all the time on a rapid river. We won't be steering in a torrent, but let's look at it. The balloon presents its entire surface to be pushed whereas a boat presents only a part of its body."
"But the boatman has a solid pivot to support his oars. Since the base of a balloon can be solid, why not use oars?"
"You don't realize that water is 800 times denser than air, therefore it would require oars of such a huge length and width that it would require many men to work them. Furthermore, the volume of the 'air oars' would have to increase along with the balloon. That would also increase their resistance as they expand. This craft would be heavy but it has to be light in order to rise due to a buoyancy resulting from the difference in the density between the two atmospheres inside and outside the envelope of the balloon."
"Well, is it possible to steer such a craft or not? You must agree, at least, that a bird manages to fly."
"Yes, but the bird has a design suitable for splitting the air, namely its head, beak, and body that form a Newtonian solid which offers the least air resistance. It has a rudder, a desire, and a means of execution that bind together all its movements...but this is enough about theory. Now you'll see an aerostat of my own devising that can deal with all the environments that we'll have to traverse."
Instantly I see a marvelous globe composed of a material that's transparent as crystal, flexible as elastic gum but strong as leather and incredibly light although quite thick. This last feature amazes me, and I dare to think that it won't work, but the Genie smiles and then we take off.

The Aerostat

Obviously we must not judge too soon

My amazement increases as we rise. The balloon increases in volume and shows me the degree of rarification of the atmosphere. At four leagues above the earth it was sixteen times greater, and at fifteen its volume was immense.
"I kept this surprising development to myself," said the Genie. "That's why I didn't respond to your observation. Now you can see why I gave my Aerostat such a large thickness."
See how men often misjudge things because they don't understand the underlying principles!

[Unfinished: Translation still in progress...]