A. V. Khramoi, Konstantin Ivanovich Konstantinov. Figures in Power Engineering. Biographical Series, issue XI, State Power Engineering Publishing House, Moscow–Leningrad, 1951, 116 pp.; price 3 rubles 85 kopecks.

The increased interest in the history of Russian science and technology prompted Gosenergoizdat to undertake the publication of a series of essays devoted to the lives and work of outstanding Russian scientists and inventors who left a deep mark on the history of electrical engineering, hydraulic engineering, and heat engineering. This series is valuable because it includes not only well-known names, such as, for example, V. V. Petrov, B. S. Jacobi, P. N. Yablochkov, A. N. Lodygin, V. N. Chikolev, D. A. Lachinov, with whom the series began. In the published issues there are names with which the reader-specialist is becoming acquainted for the first time. Such, for example, are the author of the first electric power transmission project, who also had great merit in the application of electrical energy in railway transport, F. A. Pirotskii, and the prominent figure in the field of electromining, M. M. Boreskov. K. I. Konstantinov also belongs among them; the early history of electrical instrument-making and electroautomatics is connected with his activity.

Konstantin Ivanovich Konstantinov was born in 1817 into a merchant family. At the age of 17 he entered the Mikhailov Artillery School, from which he graduated in 1838, having completed the “course of sciences” in the senior officers’ class. Konstantinov’s extraordinary abilities were noted early, and in 1839 he was appointed instructor at the divisional firework school. A year later he took the post of assistant to the head of the educational laboratory team.

Konstantinov was a little over 25 years old when he proposed an “electroballistic apparatus for measuring the flight velocity of projectiles,” which brought him well-deserved fame as a “scientist-artilleryman.”

His promotion in service was unusually rapid: he was not yet forty when he received the rank of major general. This was in 1856, after, during the Crimean War, he had distinguished himself by his work in the field of rockets and artillery.

Military affairs were not the only field in which Konstantinov’s activity unfolded. In the course of his short life (he died at the age of 54), he worked fruitfully on many questions, often very remote from one another. Among his works we find topics relating to aeronautics and to public nutrition. A broadly educated engineer, keenly attentive to the demands of everyday life, he could not pass by the catastrophe that broke out in 1868, when, as a result of crop failure, famine struck Russia. That year, while living in Nikolaev, Konstantinov delivered a report, “On Improving Public Provisions in Russia in Economic and Hygienic Respects.”

But his principal works were devoted to the applications of the achievements of physics to military affairs.

It cannot be said that the name of K. I. Konstantinov has been wholly forgotten. Having much occupied himself with questions of military technology, he became especially famous for his work on rockets. His other works remained in the background, though they were no less important. The author of the book under review set himself the task of correcting the situation that had arisen. “In our contemporary literature,” writes A. V. Khramoi, “the image and activity of K. I. Konstantinov have received one-sided treatment. He is written about chiefly as a significant figure in the native rocket artillery and as the designer of Russian military rockets. To this day, the varied and fruitful activity of K. I. Konstantinov as the inventor of electrical instruments for measuring very small intervals of time—which opened a new chapter in the history of measuring technology and enabled a number of important ballistic problems to be solved—has not been treated. To this day, his role as a pioneer in the field of the automation of technological processes and as the creator of the first electroautomatic system has not been elucidated” (pp. 5–6).

Here the author adds that he “set himself the task of giving a characterization of the whole range of K. I. Konstantinov’s activity and determining his role in the development of native and world technology.”

It must be said that this was a very difficult task. In order to carry it out, A. V. Khramoi, unlike the authors who had written about Konstantinov before, acquainted himself not only with Konstantinov’s published works and with what had been written about him, but—what is especially important—also made use of valuable archival investigations conducted by a number of repositories in Moscow and Leningrad: the Central State Archive of the Navy, the Central State Military-Historical Archive, and the Archive of the Artillery Historical Museum. This, undoubtedly, was the first serious step toward the profound study of one of the attractive pages in the history of native science and technology.

Nevertheless, it must be noted that the author did not fulfill everything he promised in his preface: we do not find in the book a “characterization of the whole range of activity” of K. I. Konstantinov. It contains only four chapters. Of these, two are survey chapters (I—“A Brief Biographical Sketch” and IV—“The Works of K. I. Konstantinov in Other Fields of Technology”). The research part of the author’s work consists of Chapter II—“The Works of K. I. Konstantinov in the Field of Electrical Instrument-Making and Electroautomatics”—and the somewhat less original Chapter III—“The Works of K. I. Konstantinov in the Field of the Design, Production, and Application of Rockets.” This is understandable. The author is a specialist in automation, most competent precisely in this field, and it is illuminated by him vividly and convincingly.

Very little biographical information about K. I. Konstantinov has been preserved, and of necessity A. V. Khramoi was forced to confine himself to a brief biographical sketch—the first chapter is so entitled. But in this chapter the author attempted to give, as he writes, a “concise characterization of the epoch” in which the investigator lived and worked. Undoubtedly,

scientific study of the biography of any prominent figure is possible only on the basis of a profound analysis of the conditions in which he lived and worked. Without taking into account social conditions, the political situation, and the level of development of the field in which the given figure labored, even the most scrupulously compiled biography will be incomplete, and the portrait drawn will inevitably be distorted.

A. V. Khramoi evidently understood this as well. But he did it by very primitive means. The characterization of the time in which K. I. Konstantinov (1817—1871) lived is presented by him through a quotation from P. I. Lyashchenko’s History of the National Economy and by fragmentary information about the cotton and iron-working industries and the number of workers in pre-reform Russia.

The author also touched only cursorily on the level of science and technology of that time. He confined himself to enumerating a number of names, naming the most outstanding scientists and inventors of the nineteenth century. It would have seemed that, speaking of the epoch in which the pioneer of electrical instrument-making and electrical automation lived, the author should have dwelt in detail on the state of the study of electricity and its practical application, indicating the contribution made to this field of knowledge by Russian scientists. And it was already absolutely necessary to dwell on electrical measuring technology, in which Konstantinov distinguished himself. After all, in this field Russian science did no small amount. The unprecedented experiments in the practical application of electricity carried out in Russia in the 1830s, unprecedented until then in their grandeur (“the Commission on the Application of Electromagnetism to the Motion of Machines by the Method of Professor Jacobi”), put forward real tasks of electrical measurement. As a result of these, precisely the Petersburg Academy of Sciences produced the first fundamental investigations in this field. M. A. Shatelen recently reminded us of this in his article “The Works of B. S. Jacobi in the Field of Electrical Measurements” (Electricity, 1950, No. 9).

Incidentally, let us note that when Jacobi had to defend the priority of Russian science in the field of electrical measurements, he duly named the works of “our learned artillery officer Konstantinov,” emphasizing his superiority over such scientists as the well-known French physicist C. Pouillet. A. V. Khramoi also relates this. But one cannot fail to note that in the text (p. 53) there is a gross error or misprint concerning the date of Jacobi’s address to the printed organ of the Paris Academy of Sciences, Comptes Rendus. It is stated here that the letter to Paris was sent in 1838, which cannot but puzzle the attentive reader. Konstantinov was then twenty-one years old; he had barely graduated from the Mikhailovskoye Artillery School and, with the rank of warrant officer, had been assigned to the Guards Horse Artillery. He turned to research activity, which drew attention to itself throughout the entire learned world, several years later, and in 1838 Jacobi could in no way have called him “a learned artillery officer,” with whose works “such a prominent scientist of that time as Pouillet, who had discovered the well-known Ohm’s law bearing the German scientist’s name, could not with any success compete.” This error (or misprint) would have been easily removable if the author, in citing Comptes Rendus, had indicated not only the volume, but also the year of publication.

The first chapter of A. V. Khramoi’s book suffers further from the shortcoming that, while giving a survey of all of Konstantinov’s activity, the author merely lists his works, without dwelling in any detail on their characterization. True, in the corresponding chapters he examines in detail the inventor’s individual achievements. But this concerns only some of them. At the same time, the author speaks of one and the same repeatedly—

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repeatedly (even three times) in almost the same words. Thus, on p. 14 we read: “In the autumn of 1844, on the Volkov Field in Petersburg, Konstantinov demonstrated in operation the first electroballistic installation in the world”; on p. 31: “The electroballistic installation constructed by him (Konstantinov.—M. R.) was demonstrated in operation in the autumn of 1844 on the Volkov Field before an authoritative commission, which included M. V. Ostrogradsky, B. S. Jacobi, and A. Ya. Kupfer”; on p. 40: “Konstantinov’s electroballistic installation was tested by an authoritative commission, which included M. V. Ostrogradsky, B. S. Jacobi, A. Ya. Kupfer.” Or again on p. 15: “...for his useful invention of an electroballistic instrument for measuring the velocity of flight of projectiles and for his exceptionally zealous service, Konstantinov was awarded the Order of Vladimir, 4th class, and 2,000 rubles in silver,” while on p. 40: “The inventor’s work was recognized as an outstanding achievement of science and technology, and Konstantinov was awarded for it the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th class, and 2,000 rubles in silver.”

The shortcomings in A. V. Khramov’s work would not have been difficult to eliminate had the author and the editors treated the published book more attentively. This is all the more regrettable because in the main chapter (IV) we encounter an attempt at serious historical-scientific research that opens up a remarkable page in the history of scientific and technical creativity in Russia in the nineteenth century.

Among the strong points of A. V. Khramov’s work is the fact that he has convincingly shown that in the Russian army there were officers who had received fundamental training in military educational institutions, in which the best scientific forces of the country were engaged as instructors and mentors of future officers (especially of the artillery and technical branches of the service), such as M. V. Ostrogradsky, E. Kh. Lenz, B. S. Jacobi, I. A. Vyshnegradsky, P. L. Chebyshev, A. V. Gadolin—classics of world science. A. V. Khramov dwells in relatively great detail on the instructors of the Mikhailovsky Artillery School, characterizing each of them as a teacher and scholar. This educational institution, founded in 1820, is remarkable also because it continued to care for the scientific success of its pupils for many years after they had left its walls. In 1845, on the occasion of the school’s twenty-fifth anniversary, it was decided to award once every five years a prize to the alumnus of the school who distinguished himself by the most outstanding scientific research or technical invention.

The first such prize was received by K. I. Konstantinov. This was in 1851. But already in 1845, during the jubilee celebration, in the jubilee article “The Celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Artillery School,” the following was written about Konstantinov’s works: “The electroballistic instrument for determining the velocities of projectiles at various points of their trajectories, remarkable for the ingenious application made in it of electromagnetic phenomena; it promises to shed new light on the theory of ballistics and has already attracted the special attention of scholars in Europe” (pp. 40–41). And in the protocol of the meeting of the commission that considered the works of the school’s former pupils and adjudicated the prize, it is noted that Konstantinov’s investigations “among them decisively and indisputably occupy first place.”

In conclusion it is emphasized: “Captain Konstantinov’s electroballistic instrument constitutes an invention of special importance, from which, in time, a new light may be shed not only on the theory of shots but also on the question, important for all physical sciences, of air resistance” (ibid.).

Konstantinov received proof of recognition at home and abroad more than once. But he too did not escape the struggle for his rights. A. V. Khramov cites a large number of documents and materials that portray the repul-

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...a dismal picture of attempts by other persons abroad to appropriate his achievements. Konstantinov himself set forth the history of the struggle for his rights, publishing in 1868 a special work entitled Materials for the History of the Application of Electricity to Ballistic Investigations. It was printed three years before his death, when his creative path was already behind him, and he met the fate of many scholars and inventors whose works in tsarist Russia were consigned to oblivion even during their lifetimes. The reason that prompted Konstantinov to write this work was a reprint in the Artillery Journal of an article by a foreign author, in which the history of the invention of the chronograph was distorted, while the Russian journal did not speak a single word in defense of Konstantinov’s rights.

In this work of his Konstantinov related how, as early as the 1840s, he had had to become involved in a dispute that arose between the Englishman Ch. Wheatstone and the Frenchman L. Breguet. The former accused the latter of appropriating an invention that belonged, as it were, to an English scholar. In fact, what had happened was this. Konstantinov, while abroad, had commissioned Wheatstone in London and Breguet in Paris to manufacture, in their workshops, the instrument he had invented, which they did. Subsequently each of them (to a greater extent Wheatstone) ascribed to himself the honor of this extraordinarily important invention. The matter met with response even in print. Konstantinov, of course, could not pass over such an obvious trampling upon his rights and undertook the appropriate steps. “According to fresh recollections,” he relates, “through the mediation of a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, Regnault, who followed my work at Breguet’s house, a statement was drawn up in which it was defined that to me in this matter belongs the greater part, and that which belongs to Breguet. The statement was signed by Mr. L. Breguet himself, by Academician Regnault, by the first secretary of our embassy in Paris Balabin, and by our Paris vice-consul Ivanov, as well as by my own signature” (p. 48).

Konstantinov achieved similar results in London as well. A. V. Khramoi cites this episode in his book with the necessary historical tact. Unfortunately, he does not dwell on the characterization of Wheatstone’s personality, devoting to him only a few lines, and only in a note (p. 27), in which other facts are also noted of Wheatstone’s borrowing of others’ ideas. But he ought to have dwelt on it. In the present case we are dealing with an author who devoted no less attention to entrepreneurial activity than to science, and this naturally led to the fact that Wheatstone could not behave otherwise than any other bourgeois capitalist. Konstantinov wrote quite justly: “Mr. Charles Wheatstone, knowing perfectly well the commercial side of the matter, by timely announcements, polemical articles, public popular lectures, patents, lawsuits, his ability to win the support of the press, and the patronage of influential persons, etc., secured for himself priority in a great many investigations and discoveries and, what was still more profitable, possession, by right of exclusive ownership, of many inventions. Through inexperience, I did not suspect the need for caution in dealings with an industrial scholar; this was to have consequences known to me and not without bitter experience” (p. 53).

Equally offensive was the indifferent attitude on the part of the authorities toward the outstanding achievements of national science and technology. A year after Konstantinov’s death, the so-called Polytechnic Exhibition was organized in Moscow. The chairman of the department of applied physics, Prof. A. S. Vladimirsky, applied to the Main Artillery Administration with a request to send to the exhibition, as exhibits, Konstantinov’s original inventions, in order “to acquaint the public with these highly interesting instruments and with their historical development.” But the Artillery Administration replied that “the only surviving electromagnetic chronoscope, transferred by Kon-

...by Konstantinov as early as 1845, “is in such a disgraceful state and so badly damaged that it cannot be sent to the exhibition” (p. 55).

Soon even the very name of this exceptionally gifted researcher began to be forgotten, and in the corresponding textbooks his achievements in domestic science and technology came to be attributed to foreign authors. A. V. Khramoi illustrates this with a number of facts, from which publications issued comparatively recently were not free. In this respect A. V. Khramoi’s work is especially valuable. It lays the foundation for the just illumination of one of the important pages of scientific and technical creativity.

It must be pointed out, however, that this is only the first step in the study of the contribution made by Konstantinov to science and technology. Many aspects of his activity, which the author merely mentions, still await investigation. One may hope that A. Khramoi will not abandon the work he has begun and will continue such valuable researches.

M. Radovsky