Nov 21, 2015 07:25 PM
http://gizmodo.com/the-physicist-who-def...1742192409
EXCERPT: [...] The Viennese physicist [Ludwig Boltzmann] loved the hustle and bustle of New York, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the two days he spent there. Next came a bumpy four-day train ride from New York to San Francisco, during which he struggled to order a lobster salad in English and admired the Great Salt Lake “covered with salt crystals like snow.” Then it was on to Berkeley, where he settled in at the Cloyne Court hotel — only to find that he would not be able to relax with a tipple before bed, because Berkeley at the time was a “dry” town by law.
Boltzmann was aghast. This was a man who loved his wine, and who readily admitted that his “memory for figures” got a bit fuzzy whenever he was “counting glasses of beer.” He never drank water from open-air bottles, because it upset his stomach, but given the lack of spirits, he was forced to do so, with predictably unpleasant results. In desperation, he appealed to a colleague as to where he could find a local wine merchant. The colleague looked startled and embarrassed that Boltzmann should bring up such an indelicate topic. But he guiltily admitted he knew of a supplier in Oakland.
A determined Boltzmann smuggled in cases of wine over the course of his stay and drank it secretly after meals. (On the train back to New York, he once again found himself battling temperance laws when the train passed through dry North Dakota; he bribed the conductors to bring him wine in the sly, not daring to try his luck with water again.) “Temperance is well on the way to creating a new kind of hypocrisy,” he observed, “of which there are already quite enough in the world....”
EXCERPT: [...] The Viennese physicist [Ludwig Boltzmann] loved the hustle and bustle of New York, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the two days he spent there. Next came a bumpy four-day train ride from New York to San Francisco, during which he struggled to order a lobster salad in English and admired the Great Salt Lake “covered with salt crystals like snow.” Then it was on to Berkeley, where he settled in at the Cloyne Court hotel — only to find that he would not be able to relax with a tipple before bed, because Berkeley at the time was a “dry” town by law.
Boltzmann was aghast. This was a man who loved his wine, and who readily admitted that his “memory for figures” got a bit fuzzy whenever he was “counting glasses of beer.” He never drank water from open-air bottles, because it upset his stomach, but given the lack of spirits, he was forced to do so, with predictably unpleasant results. In desperation, he appealed to a colleague as to where he could find a local wine merchant. The colleague looked startled and embarrassed that Boltzmann should bring up such an indelicate topic. But he guiltily admitted he knew of a supplier in Oakland.
A determined Boltzmann smuggled in cases of wine over the course of his stay and drank it secretly after meals. (On the train back to New York, he once again found himself battling temperance laws when the train passed through dry North Dakota; he bribed the conductors to bring him wine in the sly, not daring to try his luck with water again.) “Temperance is well on the way to creating a new kind of hypocrisy,” he observed, “of which there are already quite enough in the world....”