Sunday 1 July 2012

Ernest Glitch

Wealthy Victorian experimentalist, armaments mogul, aficionado of intoxication and big game hunting. His mansion in Weardale, England, had laboratory facilities second to none in the mid eighteen hundreds. In them Glitch, with his assistant Hodges, performed scientific experimentation of a most eclectic nature, and always with concentrated disregard to safety issues.


An eccentric and volatile person, his pursuit of knowledge was accompanied by the sort of hedonism only the very rich can enjoy. He wrote regularly to Michael Faraday. Here's a couple of example letters -


 Victorian 3D Printer
A computer controlled additive manufacturing machine was invented in 1857



The Artificial Goat
A Victorian water-powered autonomous lawnmower



The results of experiments he and Hodges undertook are included in the novel "The Ernest Glitch Chronicles." In this book, Glitch's letters to Faraday are presented, together with contemporary reports, a journal Glitch made of his expedition to Africa, and several narratives of his life. Also, reference is made to both his ancestors and, in detail, his descendants.

The novel has two threads. One details the horrific experiments performed by Victorian Ernest Glitch and his assistant Hodges. The other is set in the near future, where Glitch and Hodges' descendants wreak havoc, with a device capable of generating enormous power from the annihilation of nuclear waste.

Here's the contents of "The Ernest Glitch Chronicles," with several chapters available to read -




Victorian Production of One Ounce of Nitrogen Trichloride    A Discourse Relating to the Economical Production of the Most Dangerously Explosive Substance Known, Using Only Natural Minerals & Human Gastric Juice.
Red hot Ammonites & Nitric Acid.
Glitch enables the formation of a pseudo-volcano near Whitby. Also, a fossil Ichthyosaur & an innovation which clearly preempts the invention of the Birkeland & Eyde nitrogen fixation process of 1905
The Glitch Steam Engine. Requiring neither water nor coal.
A powerful hydrogen peroxide engine-part interacts with a South American camelid.

Glitch Steamer - The Locomotive.
Aycliffe man disemboweled by an African vulture.

Great Fire & Explosion at Gateshead & Newcastle.
56 dead, rivers of molten sulphur, massive destruction, Faraday implicated.

CUBIC EGGS part one.
Glitch & Hodges - their descendants, in the second millenium. They invent a device which makes them the richest people ever to live. The ensuing chaos is of a global nature.

The 1855 Grand National Steeplechase at Aintree.
The front page from the April 1855 issue of "The Turf" refers to equestrian enhancement of a scientific nature.

Victorian Nitrogen Laser 
A letter from Glitch to Faraday, dated June 1856, would appear to indicate the observation of laser action in air, more than a century before Maiman first demonstrated his ruby laser.

Fictional Influence Machine
Predating Wimshurst`s electrostatic generator, using hemispherically terminated charge carriers

Fullerenes Discovered in Victorian England
A letter from Ernest Glitch (son of Mad Judge Glitch) to Michael Faraday appears to note the crystallisation of C60 some 150 years before Kroto.

Victorian Liquid-Fuel Rocket Engine
An account of the use of hypergolic propellants and deLaval nozzles in 1856.

Victorian Tesla Coil, with reference to a possible medieval Coil.
A letter from Glitch to Michael Faraday appears to note the discovery of Germanium some 30 years before Winkler. The main body of the correspondence concerns a lightning machine.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation.
Glitch performs an experiment upon his own brain.

19th Century Jet-Powered Flying Machine in Weardale
Manned Flight achieved long before the Wright Bros., using Multiple Valve-less Pulse Jets
The First Flight.
part two of 19th Century Jet-Powered Flying Machine in Weardale, plus The Steam-Powered Rope-Engine - Mad Judge Glitch`s Power-Gallows - An account of the first test of this capital punishment machine.
Victorian Cyclotron
E. Glitch bombards diamonds with high energy particles to produce coloured 'fancy' stones. His equipment, mentioned in a letter to M. Faraday, pre-dates that of Lawrence by some 73 years
Faraday's lecture debacle.
"Chemical History of the Candle" disrupted by conflagration of Falco peregrinus.

Glitch Constructs Hypersonic Gun
Upper Weardale was impacted by several projectiles in late 1857, in Glitch`s words, "Velocities approached 70,000 furlongs to the hour, Bishop."

Trout fishing using electrolytically generated gas explosions.
A butler's lungs detonate & the effect of acceleration on a closed system of buoyancy.

The Ernest Glitch Expedition To America 1858.
Glitch decides his War Poisons could have excellent commercial potential in the USA.

Sporting activity aboard a transatlantic steamer.
A rather unfortunate incident with explosive rifle ammunition.

Twenty three days later. Virginia City, Nevada.
Hodges is mistaken for a wanted gunfighter, One Handed Thompson.

Ernest Glitch, Power Mountaineer.
The Ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley by a Steam-Limpet.

The Deal.
Mescaline Cacti for Volcanic Repeating Rifles; Geronimo meets Glitch.

The Glitch Ranunculaceous Death-Spray.
An anti-personnel weapon of self defense, for use against robbers and other undesirable blackguards. Some 150 years before US law enforcement officers were issued with Mace and CS gas sprays, Ernest Glitch demonstrated a lethal precursor using an alkaloid extracted from Aconitum napellus.

Preparing to return to Blighty from San Francisco.
Glitch & Hodges have to flee the USA, because of unpleasantness regarding a demonstration of mass-poisoning.

CUBIC EGGS part two.
Military interest causes concern.

1858: First X-Ray?
Rupert Glitch photographs his own bones

The Glitch Sporting Bathyscaphe
Accounts of the use of this extreme depth marine hunting vessel.

The Glitch Machine Gun
A fully automatic weapon 24 years before Hiram Maxim

Observation of Light Emission from Electrically Stressed Silicon Carbide Crystals
Early LED? A letter to Faraday

Hodges & the Golden Fly
Gold-nucleation experiments produce a jewel and the promise of unlimited wealth. Work is suspended because of a successful test of Glitch`s Cacodyl Offensive Weapon

The Great Geysir & One Cubic Foot of Metallic Sodium.
The Iceland geochemical expedition. Mission, to impart a scientific understanding of hydro-geothermal processes to the indigenous population.

Volcanic Bomb.
From Stromboli, Glitch pours scorn on a contemporary academic. "... but Darwin‘s grasp of the fluid dynamics regarding a globule of solidifying effervescent viscous lava in free-fall is feeble!"

The Glitch Equatorial Africa Expedition.
Radium! A highly active deposit of radio-baryte crystals is discovered. Autumn 1861. A Journal of Events by Ernest Glitch.

Weapon of Mass Destruction in Victorian Times: The Coal-Dust Flame-Thrower
Horror weapon invented in Weardale by Glitch. Also in 1862, his assistant noted the depletion of U235 in pitchblende from Oklo, and suggested that a natural reactor could be the cause of the isotopic anomaly.

Potassium Bromide; Illuminator & Castrator.
"An astonishing cold orange glow simultaneously appears, and is most beautiful to observe in a darkened room." Wolfhound Training a la Glitch.

The Glitch Electro-Magnetic Cannon.
A badger-flea is accelerated to well over the speed of sound, and survives.

Paleometeorite Unearthed in Victorian Coal-Mine.
A magnificent fossil meteorite found in the Durham Coal Measures is classified as a paleopallasite.

Ecinoderm parasite disturbs porpoise repast.
Horse doctor has his severely shattered arms splinted with sperm whale metatarsals.

Physeter Macrocephalus Farmed Inland for Spermaceti & Ambergris.
A force-fed sperm whale, raised from a calf, grew to fill a brine filled pit dug into a Weardale carboniferous limestone quarry.

Beagle 2 - A 19th Century Hybrid Coal / Liquid Nitrous Oxide Powered Rocket
Busty seam coal & laughing gas propels scientific probe into space, successfully launched 24th July 1863 from Weardale, returning 30th June 1908 over Siberia

Great Balls of Brown Gas!
The preparation of a green solid from Liquid Air & experiments with the oxides of nitrogen. Also, Thai Boxing in Victorian London; combat between Hodges and a Muay Thai fighter.

CUBIC EGGS part three.
Global Holocaust.

Jacko Macauco, Fighting Monkey
Hodges' CO2 powered artificial hand is brutally shot in a London drinking emporium.

Slowsilver discovery north west of Kyzyl.
Natural, crystalline Hg collected for the first time. Plumbum rod siphon for quicksilver. Self priming.

An Ingenious Method for the Preparation of Large Mercuric Iodide Crystals.
A single crystal is used to detect radioactivity, the output being amplified by a Victorian transistor.

Cosmic Ray Muons Detected and Tracked 1864.
The spark chamber was then utilised to predate Marconi`s wireless transmission apparatus by 45 years.
Epidermal Quicksilver.
Hodges becomes ill due to terminal mercury poisoning.

Z-pinch X-rays and Levitation.
Photography of the internal structure of a flea, the levitation of an aluminium sphere using an oscillating electromagnetic field, and coronal levitation.

Michael Faraday in Possession of Glitch`s Thallium & Oil of Vitriol Balm.
A hand delivered note, accompanying the pharmacological preparation, is dated Sunday the 25th of August 1867.

Advanced Metallurgy in Neolithic Weardale.
The ancestors of Glitch & Hodges are the first technocratic shamen. Pre-bronze age compass needles produced using the Earth's magnetic field.



 
Amazon reviews below -

The Ernest Glitch Chronicles.

A STEAMPUNK NOVEL, FULL OF
ANARCHIC EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE

"Hodges emitted a scream the like of which
I hadn't heard since his scrotum was burned off
during my experiment with fluorine gas last year."

The Exotic Experimentation of Ernest Glitch,
Victorian Science with a Smile


 

WARNING - Contains very strong language. The letters and accounts of the work of Ernest Glitch are of an appalling nature in parts, containing references to animal and human experimentation, extreme violence, Victorian drug abuse, and complete disregard for the dignity of native peoples. 135 thousand words.

Search for Ernest Glitch on your Kindle, 
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WARNING - Many subjects outlined within this site are extremely dangerous and are provided here for information only. Please don`t experiment with high voltages or chemicals unless you are fully conversant with safe laboratory practices. No liability will be accepted for death, injury or damage arising from experimentation using any information or materials supplied.