Since ancient times, man has tried to subdue the heavens. Shamans muttered incantations over chicken entrails, begging the clouds to pour down rain. If it rained, they were believed. If not, "circumstances" were blamed. But someone more observant noticed a strange connection: large forest fires were often followed by downpours. The link between smoke and rain seemed obvious but dangerous - stoking a fire for an experiment was fatally risky. The real breakthrough came when people began using gunpowder on a large scale. After every battle involving artillery, rain poured like buckets. Soldiers, illiterate but perceptive, saw white clouds of gunpowder smoke rise to the sky, and then thunderclouds joined them. Where the sun shone at the start of the battle, lightning flashed and a downpour raged at the end. Coincidence? Or something more? During the American Civil War, rain accompanied battles so often that soldiers considered it a natural companion of combat. Letters from those years constantly mention "torrential thunderstorms" accompanying the fighting. If the day began clear and calm, the storm after the battle was especially fierce. Of course, all this can be chalked up to battles usually being fought in good weather, and good weather turning stormy regardless of the fighting. But is that so? In 1891, an Australian named Frank Melbourne came to America, proclaiming himself a professional rainmaker. His formula was secret. He set up a canvas barrier, large iron vats of chemicals, and sent clouds of smoke into the sky through a thirty-foot pipe. A drought was raging in Goodland, Kansas. Farmers raised money and hired Melbourne. When he started, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. By noon, clouds began to gather; by evening, a downpour. The farmers rejoiced. Bankers persuaded Melbourne to sell his secret, but then a rainy year came, and Melbourne disappeared into Africa, where he continued to amass a fortune from his art. But he was succeeded by an even more colorful character - C. B. Jewell, a former railroad dispatcher. His method was no less spectacular: he tied dynamite to a weather balloon, launched it to a height of 1000 feet, and detonated it using a telegraph wire. "Military battles shake the heavens with shock waves reflected from the ground, but I affect them directly," he explained. Later, he added gas generation using electrical discharges in stone vats, causing "a disturbance in the balance of the heavens." The Rock Island Railroad, suffering from drought, provided Jewell with three platforms for free travel. He roamed the country, causing rain, sometimes too heavy, but admitted: "I can make rain, but I cannot stop it." The most astonishing demonstration occurred near Wichita. Local newspapers mocked Jewell, citing scientists. So he sent a note to the editor: "I will turn Main Street in Wichita into a river." Within 24 hours, the rivers overflowed, and rain fell continuously. The street did not become a river, but public opinion shifted sharply. The venomous editorials disappeared. But the most famous rainmaker became Charles Mallory Hatfield. As a boy, he heard about the legendary "Prophet Pott" and read Edward Powers' 1871 book on a scientific approach to rainmaking. The book so intrigued the public that Congress in 1891 allocated money for research. Hatfield, meanwhile, was already conducting his own experiments. In 1902, he quit his job as a sewing machine salesman and devoted himself entirely to rainmaking. He built huge wooden tanks on 12-foot-high stilts, filled them with chemicals, added water, added acid, closed the lid, and after twenty minutes opened it with a long pole. Foul-smelling clouds of steam spiraled into the sky. Hatfield was modest: he claimed he did not make rain, but "helped nature by disturbing the atmospheric balance and concentrating moisture." His first contract for $50 was made in 1903 with a farmer near Los Angeles. Immediately after releasing the smoke, a downpour came. Over 25 years, Hatfield signed more than 500 contracts for sums from $50 to $10,000. For $40,000, he undertook to fill the Hemet reservoir - rains brought 11 inches of precipitation, raising the water level by 22 feet. In 1906, rivers dried up in the Klondike, and prospectors could not wash gold. They collected $10,000 in gold for Hatfield, and within 36 hours of his work, 4 inches of rain fell. In 1922, the Italian government called on him for help during a drought - torrential rains saved the fields, and Hatfield became a national hero. He hauled his tanks from Alaska to Argentina. In the Mojave Desert, where drought is eternal, he caused 40 inches of precipitation in three hours - something never seen before or since. This was a crushing response to skeptic Dr. Jordan, who claimed Hatfield simply waited for the drought to end. Hatfield died in 1958, living long enough to see science officially recognize his methods. Dr. Irving Langmuir, working for the Navy, declared: "I can send silver iodide vapors into the sky in New Mexico and cause rain all the way to Michigan." But when Michigan resort owners complained about a ruined season, the Navy denied everything, and Langmuir fell silent. The truth was hidden. So who really controlled the weather? Shamans, soldiers, eccentrics with dynamite and chemicals - or did they all just stumble upon an ancient knowledge that science still fears to acknowledge? Hatfield knew the secret. He disturbed the balance of the heavens. And the rain came. Is it just coincidence? Or is there something behind it that we still cannot understand?

Source: gopher://shibboleths.org/0/phlog/273.txt

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