You can tell spring is coming to the heart of Death Valley by the way the lizards there lie on their backs to cool their hot feet, and when they start blowing on them summer isn’t far off. Leave a hen’s egg in the sun early in the morning and you can peel it, hard-boiled, at midday. The dead don’t crumble away to dust; they become desiccated mummies within a few hours.
In 1874 a man named Jonathan Newhouse made headlines in this area by claiming to have invented a protective suit against heatstroke and sunstroke. According to the Territorial Enterprise of Virginia City, this consisted of a long, close-fitting jacket sewn together out of inch-thick sponge and a cap of the same material. Beneath his right arm Jonathan Newhouse carried a rubber pouch from which a tube connected to the top of his cap ensured that the solar armour was permanently saturated with water, the evaporation of which produced considerable superficial cooling. To keep his outfit moist, all the desert trekker had to do was squeeze the pouch occasionally with his right arm.
Newspaper reports stated that Jonathan Newhouse was 47 years old and had come from Ohio to try out his invention under the most rigorous conditions imaginable. According to the Territorial Enterprise, he left the last human habitation on 27 June, stating that he would be back within two days. It was not, however, Newhouse who appeared on 29 June, but an Indian who could speak little English and excitedly gestured to his listeners to follow him. After riding 20 miles into the heart of the desert, the Indian pointed out a human figure leaning against a rock in the murderous heat. It was Newhouse, frozen stiff inside his solar armour. His beard was filmed with frost, and despite the heat of the midday sun, which must have exceeded 150 degrees Fahrenheit in summer, there was an icicle dangling from his nose. The Territorial Enterprise concluded by saying that Newhouse had ‘perished miserably’ in the middle of Death Valley because his invention had worked too well and he had been unable to release himself from his frozen armour.
The story was taken up by many newspapers. On 7 July it was published verbatim by the San Francisco Examiner, on 10 July by the New York Times, and on 25 July by the Scientific American. It then crossed the Atlantic and did the rounds of Great Britain. The London Times, the York Herald and the Bath Chronicle printed it under the heading ‘Too Successful’, likewise the Sheffield Daily Telegraph and the Edinburgh Evening News.
Only London’s Daily Telegraph, one of the most important newspapers in the British Empire and, thus, in the world, expressed faint doubts as to whether it was possible to generate such low temperatures by means of evaporation alone. ‘The marvellous stories which come from “the plains” are apt to be received with incredulity by our transatlantic kinsmen who dwell upon the Eastern seaboard of the United States. We confess that, although the fate of Mr Newhouse is related by the Western journal au grand sérieux, we should require some additional information before we unhesitatingly accept it. But everyone who has iced a bottle of wine by wrapping a wet cloth round it and putting it in a draught must have noticed how great is the cold that evaporation of moisture produces. For these reasons we are disposed to accept the tale from Virginia City in the same frame of mind which Herodotus, the Father of History, usually assumed when he repeated some marvel that had reached him – that is to say, we are neither prepared to disbelieve it wholly nor to credit it without question.’
The next day, a copy of the Daily Telegraph left for New York with the American mail aboard a steamship, crossed the broad plains of the Middle West by train and stagecoach, and three weeks later reached its subscriber in Virginia City, who promptly took it to the editorial office of the Territorial Enterprise, workplace not only of a young journalist named Mark Twain but also of William Wright, the editor responsible for the story. The latter picked up his pen and, his journalist’s honour sorely wounded, supplied the additional information required by the haughty Briton.
‘We are glad that the Telegraph has given us the opportunity, long awaited, of publishing in detail the sequel to the curious affair. […] A fortnight after our account of the sad affair was published, we received a letter in regard to the matter from one David Baxter, who states that he is Justice of the Peace and ex-officio Coroner at Salt Wells […] at the north end of Death Valley. “We find that the deceased […] came to his death in Death Valley, Inyo County, California, on the 27th day of June, AD 1874, by being frozen in a sort of coat of sponge called a ‘solar armor’, of which he was the inventor and in which he was tightly laced at his own request, said ‘solar armor’ being moistened with some frigorific mixture, with the precise nature of which we are unacquainted.”’ However, there were clues as to the nature of the ‘frigorific mixture’ in a carpet bag which Mr Newhouse had left behind at the settlement. This contained bottles and jars of various sizes filled with all manner of fluids, powders and salts. One of the largest bottles was labelled ‘Ether’, another ‘Bisulphide of Carbon’, and others ‘Ammonic Nitrate’, ‘Sodic Nitrate’, ‘Ammonic Chloride,’ ‘Sodic Sulphate’, and ‘Sodic Phosphate’.
‘Mr Baxter is firmly convinced,’ William Wright went on, ‘that with these chemicals, either alone or diluted with water, the degree of cold was produced which caused the death of the unfortunate man. He thinks that in his attempts to reach the fastenings of his armor, on his back, when he began to experience a painful degree of cold, he unavoidably compressed the india rubber pouch and thus constantly ejected more and more of the freezing cold fluid into the headpiece of his armor. As he stiffened in death, his arm, under which the sack was suspended, naturally pressed more strongly upon his side and thus caused a steady flow of the fluid. Mr Baxter is of the opinion that the frost and icicle found on the beard and depending from the nose of the deceased were formed from the water mingled with the more volatile fluids comprising the frigorific mixture.’
According to Mr Baxter, the men who discovered Mr Newhouse sustained appreciable frostbite in their hands when attempting to tie the corpse on a horse, because frigorific fluid oozed from the sponge whenever they touched it. They could not handle the corpse until they had cut it out of its armor. The latter was left behind in the desert.
‘In conclusion, it only remains for us to state that Mr Baxter informed us that it was his intention to send the bottles and jars of chemicals to the Academy of Sciences at San Francisco; also the solar armor, in case he could recover it. Whether or not he has done so we cannot say. For several weeks we have closely watched the reports of the proceedings of the learned body named, but as yet have seen no mention of either the chemicals or the armor.’
It only remains for us to state that, at the time of writing, the Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco has never, at any time in the ensuing 180 years, reported receiving any of the chemicals referred to, let alone a sample of the solar armour.
[What is noteworthy about Jonathan Newhouse’s home town is that William Wright, the author of the newspaper article, was also born and raised in Knox County, Ohio – a remarkable coincidence in view of the fact that Knox County, Ohio was a small town of 17,000 inhabitants. However, I am disposed to accept this in the same frame of mind usually assumed by Herodotus, the Father of History – that is to say, I am neither prepared to disbelieve it wholly nor to credit it without question. (For a biography of William Wright, alias Dan de Quille, see Richard A. Dwyer and Richard E. Lingenfelter: Dan de Quille the Washoe Giant, Reno 1990, p. 5 f.)]