Crafting Disaster: Environmental Simulation in the United States since 1880

Date of Award

Fall 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

History of Science and Medicine

First Advisor

Rankin, William

Abstract

This dissertation identifies a craft practice common to researchers and technicians working in multiple, seemingly unrelated industries in the United States from the late nineteenth through the early twenty-first centuries—what I call “environmental simulation.” In many contexts—property insurance research, Hollywood special effects, building-material design, meteorology and engineering research, and amusement park design—researchers and technicians attempted to understand “natural disasters” and the damage they caused using a similar approach—by staging and re-creating them. They crafted simulations out of air, water, sand, wood, and plastic; and they attempted to corral and contain these fluid, swirling, falling materials to visualize how volatile forces of nature might damage buildings and cities. I trace a boomerang arc in the craft of environmental simulation across the twentieth century—swinging from analog to digital simulation and then recently back to a resurgence of analogs. I show that, despite the proliferation of digital simulation tools since the middle of the twentieth century, analog simulations of building destruction persisted and eventually experienced a revival in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. I argue that analog environmental simulations gained renewed attention at the turn of the millennium because they made newly disquieting yet amorphous environmental threats feel more concrete and understandable. Analog simulations conveyed the tangibility of otherwise nebulous perils because analogs were isomorphic; the materials and conditions of the simulation were the same or similar to the materials and conditions of the real world. This material similarity has viscerally conveyed the impacts of wind, water, fire, and earth movement to varied audiences. Given the isomorphic quality of analog environmental simulations, they are objects around which groups in various settings have been able to collaborate through shared observation, discussion, and understanding for more than a century. Five chapters follow this boomerang arc. The first three chapters examine methods of analog environmental simulation in roughly the first half of the twentieth century. Chapter One establishes the state of analog fire simulation in both the engineering sciences and entertainment design at the turn of the twentieth century, amid perceptions of the vulnerability of new construction systems and building materials. Chapter Two traces the origins of analog special effects techniques in the first three decades of Hollywood motion-picture production and the establishment of a popular visual culture based on dynamic simulations of destruction. Chapter Three discusses outdoor weathering testing (the analog simulation of sunlight and precipitation damage to paints, plastics, and other materials) and the introduction of laboratory devices like the Atlas Weather-ometer that simulated weathering at a more accelerated pace. Analog weathering simulations made visible the most subtle and slow forms of building deterioration. The final two chapters and a conclusion discuss the persistence of analog environmental simulation amid the ubiquity of digital tools in the second half of the twentieth century and the turn of the millennium. Chapter Four traces the history of tornado simulation in meteorology and wind engineering—from early analog laboratory models of the 1960s, to digital tornado simulations based on data derived from analog models, and finally a resurgence of analog simulations in tornado-related engineering in the twenty-first century. Chapter Five continues a story from Chapter One of hazard simulations sponsored by the US property insurance industry. This chapter traces the emergence of large-scale insurance-sponsored simulation of weather (rain, hail, and wind) and its impacts on buildings in the aftermath of several damaging hurricanes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The fast and violent imagery of insurance-sponsored weather simulations promoted the industry’s interests in small-scale loss prevention rather than a systemic insurance-industry response to climate change. A conclusion chapter discusses instances of analog simulation that have persisted through the first quarter of the twenty-first century amid growing recognition of climate-related hazards.

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