Fascinating comparison. My focus is mainly on the 1850s through 1960s, so I didn't dive into the design of the castle. Thanks for bringing it up. Are you familiar with Fort Bourtange in the Netherlands?
I hadn't till you mentioned it, and then I looked it up! I see it pre-dates Vauban by a hundred years, and that makes me wonder how original his "star" shape was. From what I could tell from the photos, Osaka would seem to be fairly easily defensible (without aerial combat, of course), but I wonder how much redundancy it has if a corner were to be destroyed with cannon fire. The popular scientist James Burke did a TV series in the 1970s called Connections (you can find it on YouTube), and one episode looks in quite some detail at fort design and calculating the trajectories of cannon balls. Beautiful pictures, as ever. Thank you.
Gosh, that's very good detective work! Yes, here he explains about fort design. But, in another episode, he looks at Niccolò Tartaglia, who did extensive experiments to determine the arc described by a cannon ball. It's astonishing that, at the time (around 1500), there was no definitive view on how a cannon ball travels through the air before it hits its target (or not).
Burke is still around, and he was a familiar face on UK TV in the 70s and 80s. The Connections series seeks to trace back our (then) lifestyles to determine what inventions and discoveries led (not always in a straight line) to where we are now, or then (i.e. no Internet). There was another series, "The Day The Universe Changed", which is predicated on the same idea. I like the re-enactments they do, which are very convincing.
Some kind soul has put these old VHS recordings on YouTube,: the quality is not brilliant, but I think the programmes are as entertaining now as they ever were. Try and find the one with Tartaglia, failing which: watch them all!
Thanks. When I have a little more time I will try to find the episode about Niccolò Tartagli.
I knew Burke mainly from the famous rocket launch timed perfectly to his narration. As I have worked as a journalist with TV and radio for some three decades, I know how incredible difficult and nerve wrecking that must have been to accomplish.
You notice him timing his words. He goes a bit slower when he comes close then speeds up again.
Fascinating reading that filled me in on Osaka’s interesting past! Thanks so much for putting all of this together and sharing it.
Thank you for your kind words. I will go a bit deeper into the topic in the next two articles.
Interesting to compare to Vauban's bastions, such as the one at Belfort.
Fascinating comparison. My focus is mainly on the 1850s through 1960s, so I didn't dive into the design of the castle. Thanks for bringing it up. Are you familiar with Fort Bourtange in the Netherlands?
I hadn't till you mentioned it, and then I looked it up! I see it pre-dates Vauban by a hundred years, and that makes me wonder how original his "star" shape was. From what I could tell from the photos, Osaka would seem to be fairly easily defensible (without aerial combat, of course), but I wonder how much redundancy it has if a corner were to be destroyed with cannon fire. The popular scientist James Burke did a TV series in the 1970s called Connections (you can find it on YouTube), and one episode looks in quite some detail at fort design and calculating the trajectories of cannon balls. Beautiful pictures, as ever. Thank you.
Is this the Connections episode that you had in mind? https://youtu.be/wsJxY4HsLH4?si=9CntbpGfR_-L9upI
As it happens, Burke explains the bastion concept in this episode at another Dutch fort, the one at Naarden.
I believe that Dutch military engineers during the Eighty Years War (1568–1648) actually had a great influence on the development of bastions.
Gosh, that's very good detective work! Yes, here he explains about fort design. But, in another episode, he looks at Niccolò Tartaglia, who did extensive experiments to determine the arc described by a cannon ball. It's astonishing that, at the time (around 1500), there was no definitive view on how a cannon ball travels through the air before it hits its target (or not).
Burke is still around, and he was a familiar face on UK TV in the 70s and 80s. The Connections series seeks to trace back our (then) lifestyles to determine what inventions and discoveries led (not always in a straight line) to where we are now, or then (i.e. no Internet). There was another series, "The Day The Universe Changed", which is predicated on the same idea. I like the re-enactments they do, which are very convincing.
Some kind soul has put these old VHS recordings on YouTube,: the quality is not brilliant, but I think the programmes are as entertaining now as they ever were. Try and find the one with Tartaglia, failing which: watch them all!
Thanks. When I have a little more time I will try to find the episode about Niccolò Tartagli.
I knew Burke mainly from the famous rocket launch timed perfectly to his narration. As I have worked as a journalist with TV and radio for some three decades, I know how incredible difficult and nerve wrecking that must have been to accomplish.
You notice him timing his words. He goes a bit slower when he comes close then speeds up again.
Fascinating. Never knew most of the info.
Thank you, Peter. I love discovering little known tidbits about the things that surround us, and seem so familiar.