Hell machine
Hell machine ( French machine infernale , English infernal machine ) was a name for explosive charges used by military or terrorist means , which are detonated by time fuses or sensors , especially in the 19th century . In the joking sense, which is still more topical today, it is an expression for eerie and at the same time fascinating machines of all kinds, due to their apparent unpredictability, their speed or the dangers they pose. The first steam-powered railways were seen as machines in hell, as are particularly fast (and loud) motorcycles or computers with above-average performance today.
history
In the Palatinate War of Succession in 1693, the English sent a ship ( Brander ) loaded with gunpowder and other combustible material against the walls of the fortress of St. Malo . This type of ship was called the infernal machine .
In the 19th century, time fuse bombs were used, particularly in Great Britain and Russia , but also in France, to carry out assassinations , for example those on Napoléon Bonaparte on December 24, 1800 and on King Louis Philippe by Joseph Fieschi on July 28, 1835. The Confederate submarines , which were used in America during the Civil War to attach explosive charges to ships and then detonate them with a time fuse or a remote fuse, were also referred to by the unionists as machines of hell. The kind of warfare in which one attacked the enemy secretly and unnoticed without taking any risk should be presented as illegitimate.
In his drama The Infernal Machine (1932), Jean Cocteau developed the idea of a hellish machine as a tragic event without gods, based on the Oedipus myth.
literature
- FM Feldhaus: The technology of prehistoric times, historical times and primitive peoples. Published by Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig and Berlin 1914