John Henry Pepper

Liverpudlian Engineer Henry Dircks is believed to have devised a method of projecting an actor onto a stage using a sheet of glass and a clever use of lighting, calling the technique "Dircksian Phantasmagoria" (see phantasmagoria). The actor would then have an ethereal, ghost-like appearance while seemingly able to perform alongside other actors. Pepper saw the concept and replicated it on a larger scale,[5] taking out a joint patent with Dircks. Pepper debuted his creation with a Christmas Eve production of the Charles Dickens play The Haunted Man in 1862 and Dircks signed over all financial rights to Pepper.[1] Through this the effect became known as "Pepper's ghost", much to the frustration of Dircks, and though Pepper insisted that Dircks should have a share of the credit, the technique is still named after the man who popularised it.[5] Some reports have suggested that, at the time, Pepper claimed to have developed the technique after reading the 1831 book Recreative Memoirs by famed showman Étienne-Gaspard Robert.[2]

Pepper's demonstrations of "the ghost effect" were received with amazement by the general public while intriguing his fellow scientists. People returned to the theatre repeatedly in an attempt to work out the method being used; famed physicist Michael Faraday eventually gave up and requested an explanation.[6]

Pepper wrote eleven popular science books, starting with his first publications in the 1850s.[2] 1861's The Playbook of Metals, built upon the work of Antonio Snider-Pellegrini and is regarded as an important step in the understanding of continental drift. The books became so successful, particularly The Boy's Playbook of Science, that they could be found in secondary schools throughout the United Kingdom,[4] and some American reprints became prescribed school texts in Pennsylvania and Brooklyn.[2]

Pepper was fascinated with electricity and light. In 1863 he illuminated Trafalgar Square and St. Paul's Cathedral to celebrate the marriage of Edward Albert, Prince of Wales, and Alexandra of Denmark. He achieved this using a variation of the arc lamp. On 21 December 1867 at a banquet of "noblemen and scientific gentlemen" Pepper arranged for a telegram to be sent between Arthur Wellesley, 2nd Duke of Wellington and Andrew Johnson, President of the United States who was in Washington at the time. The message took just under 10 minutes to arrive in the United States with a reply coming in after around 20 minutes. This transmission was hailed as a significant achievement for science.[2]

The Summer of 1882 brought a drought to the south-east of Queensland with little rain and intense temperatures. Pepper believed that a scientific solution to the problem might be possible and decided to attempt a rainmaking experiment. He took out a front page advertisement in the 30 January 1882 issue of The Brisbane Courier to publicise the event, scheduled for 4 February 1882 at the Eagle Farm Racecourse.[10] Further advertisements mentioned that there would be "several interesting Illustrations of Atmospheric Phenomena" and gave some details about the method that he planned to employ.[2]

Pepper started his experiments in the weeks leading up to the public event. He gathered a range of materials including ten swivel guns, powerful rockets from HMS Cormorant, a land mine, and a large quantity of gunpowder. The plan would be to create a bonfire that would billow smoke into the air, then an explosion in the clouds would contribute to a change in their electrical condition. He theorised that this would trigger the rainfall. Several helpers tried to launch a 20-foot steel kite into the air but had little success, finding it to be unwieldy. He reduced its size in time for the main show.[2]

The Eagle Farm event was attended by nearly 700 people. Pepper's smaller kite only managed to fly a short distance into the sky and had to be abandoned. The swivel guns were then fired, attempting to create an explosion in the sky. However, due to an overfilling of powder in one of the guns, the only explosion of significance was the gun itself which was sent crashing into the empty grandstand. Another potentially dangerous incident was the launching of the rockets, one of which flew horizontally, narrowly missing the crowd.[2]

The crowd were not impressed by the efforts of Pepper and his team, laughing and jeering at their failed attempts. Some members of the audience even joined in by trying to launch the kite themselves. The newspapers were also unkind with the Warwick Examiner and Times describing the event as being a "pseudo-scientific fiasco".[11] Pepper felt very badly treated by fellow scientists and the general public and in a letter written to The Brisbane Courier dated 27 May 1882 he stated:

"My experiment in Queensland was received with such derision and insults that in the face of those hard steely railings I shall leave to others the honour and expense of trying to do good by gently persuading the clouds to drop fatness."[12]

In the coming years other scientists attempted what Pepper called "cloud compelling" (see Weather modification). In another letter to The Brisbane Courier in April 1884 Pepper referred to one of them, saying that he hoped the scientist would "not be unappreciated or treated with the ribald and narrowminded jokes and judgments that were showered on my head."[13]