Five ways Apple will never be the same without Jobs as CEO

As Steve Jobs permanently steps down as CEO, Apple is on top of the world. It has redefined the smartphone and the tablet in an era when those two devices are destined to dominate the next stage of computing. It has become the most valuable and most profitable technology company in world and one of the planet’s most powerful and recognizable brands. For a brief time when the stock market was going through its recent gyrations, Apple even passed Exxon Mobile to become the most valuable company in the world.

But, for those of us who have been around the tech industry for the past three decades, the most eye-popping thing Apple has accomplished in the past 14 years since Jobs returned to Apple was to turn the tables on its old rival Microsoft. Apple used to argue that it made higher quality products and out-innovated Microsoft, even if Microsoft made a lot more money by selling tasteless products to the masses, according to Jobs. In 2011, Apple now makes even more money than Microsoft (which still makes a lot in its own right).

But, Steve Jobs stepping down as CEO will inevitably put Apple’s future at risk. You’re going to read a lot of articles in the coming days where people are going to tell you all of the reasons that Apple is going to be fine and that the legacy of Steve Jobs will be enough to sustain the company for decades, and that Apple will be like Disney after Walt Disney’s departure. Here’s the bottom line — there’s simply no scenario in which Apple can be better without Steve Jobs as CEO than they were with him there.

Sure, Jobs will still be around as Chairman, but that’s a lot different than being in the trenches with engineers and designers every day. Few tech CEOs have ever been as hands-on as Jobs, and without him in the mix there’s going to be a gaping hole in Apple’s company culture and collective psyche.

Here are five big questions that Apple will have to face without Jobs involved in the day-to-day operations of the company. None of them have good answers, and that’s why Apple will be hard-pressed to continue its unbroken run of successes as Jobs exits the front of the stage.

5. Who will ignore what the public wants?

A few years ago, Jobs said, ”You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give it to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” That was his approach to product development throughout his career. He never tried to keep up with what the masses wanted, but tried to give them something new to fall in love with. Very few people in history have been as good as Jobs at judging what large numbers of people will want before they know they want it. Even fewer have ever had the guts to place big bets on those things. It’s unlikely Apple will ever find another leader who can do that like Jobs, and that more than anything else has been the key to Apple’s recent success.

4. Who will shame people into greatness?

The Steve Jobs management style is not normal in corporate America. He was notoriously abrasive, confrontational, and borderline-inappropriate. He got in people’s faces. He called them names. He demeaned their humanity. And yet, plenty of Apple employees will say that he pushed them to create the greatest work of their careers. As a people manager, he was the Bobby Knight of tech. From the outside, a lot of people were appalled by the stories of Jobs’ behavior toward his employees, but insiders will tell you that he could also be extremely generous, enthusiastic, and charming. And, when he praised an employee, it was like they just hit a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth. Jobs could get away with this behavior — which gets most CEOs despised or fired — because he was Steve Jobs. Apple probably won’t ever have another leader with this decidedly old school management approach — much more in the Vince Lombardi tradition than the modern Ken Blanchard mode. But, the main reason Apple’s products are so polished is a result of Jobs’ ferocious perfectionism.

3. Who will take the big risks?

It’s easy to forget that when Apple first announced the iPhone, there were a lot of people in the technology industry who scoffed or snickered. CIOs called it a “toy.” Research in Motion openly mocked the iPhone for a couple years and completely dismissed it as a competitor to the BlackBerry (we see how well that worked out for them). Most of the telecom carriers even ignored the iPhone for years before they weren’t willing to deal with Apple’s demands. The point is that Apple had a lot to overcome to create a successful mobile phone. It took years. It took a lot of money. It took a lot of relationship-building. And, there was never any guarantee of success. In fact, in 2007 when Apple first launched the iPhone, it was probably more likely that the carriers would find a way to lock out the iPhone or cripple it. The whole thing could have turned into a major distraction and a money pit. Instead, because the public loved the device, it pushed the entire smartphone industry in a different direction. It was a huge risk, but when it was successful, it came with a huge reward. Jobs took a similar risk with the iPad three years later, and got a similar result. Will new CEO Tim Cook be willing to take those kinds of risks? Or, more importantly, will he be smart enough to take the right kinds of huge risks? It’s hard to imagine anyone doing it better than Jobs has done over the past decade — even Jobs himself would have had a hard time emulating his success over the next decade.

2. Who will say “No”?

Jobs once said, ”I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things [we] have done. Innovation is saying ‘no’ to a 1,000 things.” I recently wrote an entire piece about this topic: White iPhone debacle shows why Apple is winning. That article is about the fact that Apple promised a white version of the iPhone 4, but had to delay it multiple times (after several more “coming soon” promises). The product wasn’t right and Apple refused to release a White iPhone 4 to the public until it was right. Most companies would have just released it earlier. Trust me. I see a ton of tech products come across my desk every month that still need to be finished and should have never been released. This is another example of where Jobs’ relentless perfectionism has powered Apple’s string of successes. Saying “no” is hard. It disappoints people. It can make your company look bad in the short term. It can put a lot of heat on you. Most companies say “yes” way too often. Apple will have to institutionalize and internalize the kind of discipline that Jobs repeatedly demonstrated. That’s a tall order.

1. Who will conjure the “magic”?

Lots of leaders use hyperbole to promote their products, but only Steve Jobs can actually get a lot of people to believe it. I’ve been puzzling over this for years. Why do so many of the same people who turn cynical when most CEOs go into their sales pitches perk up when Jobs unleashes his bold claims about Apple products? Is it because Jobs has led so many successful projects in the past? Is it because he’s more persuasive? Is it because he has a great team that has repeatedly delivered quality products? It’s probably a little bit of all those things, but more than anything else, it has to do with Jobs’ charisma and communication style (which aren’t easily emulated). Jobs is generally pretty low-key and subtle, but then all of the sudden he’ll fire off a big hyperbole or an enthusiastic flare. The contrast of the two styles seems to have the effect of making people say to themselves, “Whoa, if he thinks it’s big and is getting excited about it, then it must be important.” That’s why people fall for it when Jobs dubs a tablet computer as a “magical and revolutionary” thing. It’s not just Job’s discipline and knack for taking the right risks that has made Apple successful, it’s his own ability to promote Apple’s products and get millions of people excited about them. That’s worth more than millions of dollars of marketing, and it’s the one thing that is almost completely irreplaceable.

Batman in happier times

Anti-Virus Pioneer Evgeny Kaspersky

SPIEGEL: Mr. Kaspersky, when was the last time that a virus hunter like you fell victim to a cyber attack?

Evgeny Kaspersky: My computer was almost infected twice recently. When someone returned my flash card to me at a conference, it was infected with a virus. But then our own virus program helped me. The second time, the website of a hotel in Cyprus was infected. These kinds of things can happen to anyone, no matter how careful you are. I need protection just like anyone else. After all, a specialist on sexually transmitted diseases also relies on condoms for protection.

SPIEGEL: Virologists sometimes rave about the deadly perfection of the viruses they study. Do you still ever get excited yourself about the technology of a computer virus?

Kaspersky: The more sophisticated a virus is, the more exciting it is to crack its algorithm. I'm happy if I can do it. Okay, sometimes there's a little professional respect involved, too. But it has nothing to do with enthusiasm. Every virus is a crime. Hackers do bad things. I would never hire one.

SPIEGEL: You and your company are the winners of a new era in warfare.

Kaspersky: No, because this war can't be won; it only has perpetrators and victims. Out there, all we can do is prevent everything from spinning out of control. Only two things could solve this for good, and both of them are undesirable: to ban computers -- or people.

SPIEGEL: Although your company Kaspersky Lab now employs more than 2,000 employees, it's a small business compared with antivirus software makers like McAfee and Symantec. Can you ever catch up with them?

Kaspersky: We're certainly trying. Russia is our most important competitive advantage. Moscow produces the world's best programmers. It has a large number of outstanding technical universities. And although Russians can't build cars the way you Germans can, they do write brilliant software.

SPIEGEL: You were once trained as a cryptologist by the KGB. Does that at all hinder your expansion in the West?

Kaspersky: No, but the fact that we are a company with Russian roots does. We occasionally sense a certain amount of suspicion. Nevertheless, we are now No. 1 in Germany, are growing rapidly in the United States and even have customers within NATO.

SPIEGEL: Who?

Kaspersky: A defense ministry. I won't reveal the name of the country.

SPIEGEL: Which countries do most viruses come from?

Kaspersky: It's hard to say because viruses unfortunately don't carry ID cards. We can at least usually identify the originator's language, and that's at the moment the inventor communicates with his virus and gives it a command.

SPIEGEL: Russian programmers don't only do good things. We assume that they also dominate the virus business.

Kaspersky: Based on the number of programmed viruses, we are in third place behind China and Latin America. Unfortunately, Russians are also among the most sophisticated and advanced players in criminal cyber activity. These days, they invent viruses and complex Trojan programs on demand. They launder money through the Internet. However, the largest number of harmful programs are written in Chinese. This means that they can be coming directly from the People's Republic, but also from Singapore, Malaysia and even California, where there are Mandarin-speaking hackers.

SPIEGEL: Surprisingly enough, very few viruses seem to be coming from India even though it's a rising star in the IT world.

Kaspersky: In general, the crime level in India is low. It's probably a matter of the mentality. India and China have roughly the same population, the same computer density, a similar standard of living and similar religious roots. But China spits out viruses like they were coming off an assembly line.

Part 2: Amateurs and Professionals

SPIEGEL: Why is Russia producing some of the most dangerous hacker rings but very few world-class software companies like your own?

Kaspersky: There are a few, but I see a basic problem: In Russia, the level of technical training has traditionally been high, and it has been transferred from teachers to students for generations. But there are no teachers who know how to build a business with this training because, over seven decades of communism, doing business was never allowed to be the focus. Most of today's business leaders are around 50, which means they were born during the Soviet era. They often have a type of Iron Curtain in their minds. They like to go abroad for vacation; but when they do business, they limit themselves to countries that once belonged to the Soviet Union because that's where people speak their language and understand them culturally. I hope to see a new generation that is no longer afraid of other cultures and that speaks English.

SPIEGEL: The Russian search engine Yandex recently raised $1.3 billion (€912 million) in its initial public offering in New York, which was the highest IPO figure in the industry since Google…

Kaspersky: …which is an unbelievably important signal for many people here. A Russian company has shown that it can be successful with the power of our brains rather than with our natural resources. There is an American dream, and now there is a Russian dream, as well: to make money without oil and gas.

SPIEGEL: You once described yourself as an extremely paranoid person. What is the worst possible disaster that a computer viruses could cause?

Kaspersky: In the Soviet days, we used to joke that an optimist learns English because he is hoping that the country will open up, that a pessimist learns Chinese because he's afraid that the Chinese will conquer us, and that the realist learns to use a Kalashnikov. These days, the optimist learns Chinese, the pessimist learns Arabic…

SPIEGEL: …and the realist?

Kaspersky: …keeps practicing with his Kalashnikov. Seriously. Even the Americans are now openly saying that they would respond to a large-scale, destructive Internet attack with a classic military strike. But what will they do if the cyber attack is launched against the United States from within their own country? Everything depends on computers these days: the energy supply, airplanes, trains. I'm worried that the Net will soon become a war zone, a platform for professional attacks on critical infrastructure.

SPIEGEL: When will that happen?

Kaspersky: Yesterday. Such attacks have already occurred.

SPIEGEL: You're referring to Stuxnet, the so-called "super virus" that was allegedly programmed to sabotage Iranian nuclear facilities.

Kaspersky: Israeli intelligence unfortunately doesn't send us any reports. There was a lot of talk -- on the Internet and in the media -- that Stuxnet was a joint US-Israeli project. I think that's probably the most likely scenario. It was highly professional work, by the way, and one that commands a lot of respect from me. It cost several million dollars and had to be orchestrated by a team of highly trained engineers over several months. These were no amateurs; these were total professionals who have to be taken very seriously. You don't get in a fight with them; they don't mess around.

SPIEGEL: What kind of damage can a super virus like this inflict?

Kaspersky: Do you remember the total power outage in large parts of North America in August 2003? Today, I'm pretty sure that a virus triggered that catastrophe. And that was eight years ago.

SPIEGEL: Firemen tend to describe the dangers of fire in particularly dramatic terms because they make their money fighting fires. Aren't you just trying to scare people about viruses because that's your bread and butter?

Kaspersky: If I were only interested in the money, my company would have gone public by now. Believe it or not, my primary concern is making the world a cleaner place. Money is important; but if I do my job well, that will take care of itself.

SPIEGEL: Hackers have recently been taking aim at companies like Lockheed Martin, Google and Sony…

Kaspersky: …simply because they can now infiltrate their well-protected security systems to access secret information. This puts companies at risk, but it also jeopardizes entire nations. It's a matter of private industrial espionage, but countries are also involved.

SPIEGEL: Are you saying that governments are behind many of the attacks?

Kaspersky: I don't rule it out.

SPIEGEL: Google has claimed that the attack on its e-mail services was traced back to China.

Kaspersky: I have no information pointing toward China as the actual originator. Professionals do their work through proxy servers. They can be located in China but controlled from the United States. Perhaps it was just competitors -- but people then pointed the finger at China. Anything can happen in our business.

Part 3: Sources of Future Threats

SPIEGEL: In 2007, Estonia provoked the Russians when it moved a Soviet-era war memorial. Do you think the Kremlin was behind the subsequent cyber attackon the small country?

Kaspersky: Not the government, but enraged Russian spammers who directed special computer networks known as "botnets" against Estonia. It became the prototype of a belligerent cyber attack on a country. The attackers didn't just cripple government websites; they also sent so many spam e-mails that the entire Internet channel to Estonia quickly collapsed. The country was cut off from the world. The banking system, trade, transportation -- everything ground to a halt.

SPIEGEL: Could Russian hackers figuratively "checkmate" Germany?

Kaspersky: (laughing) We won't do that. If we did, who would buy our natural gas?

SPIEGEL: A number of computer geeks and hackers have banded together into an elusive online group known as "Anonymous," which is constantly staging fresh guerilla cyber campaigns. What are your thoughts about it?

Kaspersky: I don't think Anonymous has done any major damage yet. But I also don't support this group. Some of these people have good intentions and are merely trying to draw attention to security loopholes. But there are also those with bad intentions. Imagine you left the key in your front door. Some would call to let your know, whereas others would spread the news throughout the entire city that your front door is open. That's Anonymous; it's unpredictable.

SPIEGEL: In the future, terrorist organizations like al-Qaida could also wage cyber wars.

Kaspersky: Terrorists primarily use the Internet for communication, propaganda and recruiting new members and funding sources. So far, highly qualified cyber criminals have had enough sense to not get involved with terrorists. But, in the future, we should count on seeing cyber attacks on factories, airplanes and power plants. Just think of Die Hard 4…

SPIEGEL: …in which Bruce Willis had to fight his way through an army of young hackers.

Kaspersky: Half of the film is Hollywood fiction, but the other half is quite realistic. That really worries me.

SPIEGEL: Your 20-year-old son Ivan was recently kidnapped by a gang but liberated unharmed a few days later. How dangerous is it to be rich in Russia?

Kaspersky: More dangerous than it is in Munich, but not as dangerous as it is in Colombia, where I usually traveled in an armored car when I was there on vacation. The children of successful entrepreneurs are kidnapped in other countries, too. Thank God the Russian authorities and my security service were able to rescue Ivan. My son was partly to blame for his kidnapping: He had broadcast his address on Facebook even though I'd been warning him for years not to reveal any personal information on the Internet. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter make it easier for criminals to do their work.

SPIEGEL: Your son is studying mathematics and works as a programmer. Do you expect him to take over your company one day?

Kaspersky: If he's good, maybe so.

SPIEGEL: Silicon Valley is teeming with Russian scientists. Didn't you ever want to emigrate to America?

Kaspersky: Once, in 1992. I had just returned to Moscow from Hanover, from my first trip to the West. At the time, I could do nothing but shake my head in disgust over my country. The prosperity gap was enormous. It's become significantly smaller today. And because I travel so much, I know there are pros and cons everywhere -- whether social, economic or political.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Kaspersky, thank you for this interview.

Interview conducted by Matthias Schepp and Thomas Tuma

Patton Oswalt on George Lucas

Creepy short film from Pixar's Rodrigo Blaas.

Paris: City of lights and cosmic rays

Paris has long had the nickname the "City of Lights," due to its role as a center of education during the Age of Enlightenment and, in the 1800s, due to its early implementation of electric lighting. It very nearly had its name associated with another form of radiation in 1910, however, thanks to a truly unique experiment performed in the most iconic spot in the city: the Eiffel Tower! The experiment, which was the first significant evidence of the existence of cosmic radiation, also highlights the challenges scientists experienced in the early 20th century and the ingenuity they used to overcome them.

The early 1900s was a period of intense interest in radioactivity. The phenomenon was discovered in 1896 by Parisian researcher Henri Becquerel in what can only be described as a serendipitous find. Becquerel specialized in the study of phosphorescence and fluorescence, and wondered if such "glow in the dark" materials might give off X-rays, which had themselves only been discovered the year earlier.

Becquerel wrapped photographic plates in black paper, placed a sample of phosphorescent uranium potassium sulfate on top of it, and placed it in the Sun. As he expected, the photographic plates were darkened, suggesting the presence of X-rays. When poor weather forced him to put his experiments on hold, however, he found that the uranium still darkened the photographic plates, suggesting the presence of some sort of inherent radiation coming from the uranium itself!

One of Becquerel's earliest images of radioactive uranium. The dark spots are the uranium pieces; the light cross in the lower image is from a metal Maltese cross placed between the uranium and photographic plate. (Image from  Wikipedia)

Becquerel's discovery didn't attract much attention at first, being overshadowed by the more sensational properties of X-rays. This changed with the investigations of Marie Curie, who demonstrated multiple new radioactive elements. Around 1898, she demonstrated that the known element thorium was also radioactive, and in the same year she and her husband Pierre crushed hundreds of kilograms of uranium ore to isolate the new radioactive element polonium. Their investigations suggested an even more radioactive element in even smaller quantities, and within a year they had demonstrated the existence of the highly radioactive radium -- though it took until 1902 to collect even a tenth of a gram of this new substance.

With the discovery of radioactivity also came an awareness that radiation was, to some degree, present everywhere. Electroscopes, devices designed to store and measure electric charge, were found to slowly lose that charge, regardless of how well they were insulated. A simple form of electroscope is a gold leaf electroscope, illustrated below. When a positively-charged friction rod is brought near the device, the negative charge in the gold leaf is drawn towards it, leaving the leaves with a net positive charge. The positively-charged leaves repel, giving a rough measure of the strength of the induction. Touching the friction rod to the electroscope draws away all the negative charge and leaves the scope with a net positive charge.

Left: A gold leaf electroscope, with a positive charge induced in the gold leaf. (Picture by Dr. SkySkull.)

Even well-insulated electroscopes will gradually lose charge due to the bombardment of external radiation. The radiation ionizes the air within it, and the free charges are then drawn to and neutralize the charge on the leaves. For researchers, the next natural question to ask was: what is the origin/nature of this radiation? The obvious conclusion was that it came from radioactive materials within the earth, but it was not clear exactly within the earth it originated. Also, the possibility of radioactive emanations from above, though seemingly unlikely, could not be discounted.

These mysteries drew the attention of Professor Theodor Wulf (1868-1946), a German born physicist and Jesuit priest who lectured at the St. Ignatius College in Valkenburg, Holland. All accounts suggest that he was a talented scientist, and he even studied at the University of Göttingen under the distinguished chemist  Walter Nernst, who would eventually win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1920.

Right: Theodor Wulf (Image source)

In the course of his studies, Wulf noted that the electroscopes in use were not precise enough to carry out detailed ionization experiments, and furthermore the delicate gold leaves were easily damaged when moving the device, making it a poor choice for studies in the field. To solve these issues, in 1907 he designed his own "dual thread electrometer", which became known as the "Wulf electrometer" and was quickly employed by many researchers performing delicate ionization experiments.

Left: The Wulf electrometer, which uses a pair of conducting wires instead of leaves as a measure of the stored charge. (Taken from a 1909 paper by Wulf [1].)

The Wulf electrometer uses, in place of gold leaf, two quartz threads coated with platinum. When charged, they bow outwards, as shown in the figure, and their separation can be very accurately measured with a microscope, in turn providing a very accurate measure of the charge remaining on the threads. A screw "A" at the top of the device allows one to rotate the threads to be maximally visible to the microscope; for ease of transport, the bottom of the threads is weighted and loosely coupled to the bottom of the (metal) container. The protruding cavity in the lower right corner of the chamber evidently contained sodium, to draw off any excess humidity that might prematurely discharge the device.

Of course, the device could also lose charge by means other than radiation, simply by virtue of it not being perfectly isolated from the outside environment. To measure such "isolation errors", Wulf had an addtional vertical cylinder inserted into the chamber (held by screws "S") that could be slid over the wires. This would essentially protect the wires from the gas ionized by radiation, and any losses that occurred were presumably due to other inherent weaknesses in the system.

Wulf took his electrometer and made measurements of the inherent radioactivity in a variety of diverse locations, including high above sea level near the town  Zermatt, Switzerland (in the shadow of the Matterhorn), in chalk mines near his home in Valkenburg, and in the  Caves of Han-sur-Lesse in Belgium. For the most part, the measurements, though they showed great variability with location, indicated that the measured radiation was coming from the ground.

Some tantalizing clues suggested otherwise, however. In one of his experiments, Wulf placed his electrometer into a snugly-fitting pool of water. With the top of the device blocked with a meter of water, he saw a slight decrease in ionization loss, suggesting that radiation from above must contribute, albeit weakly. Furthermore, in 1909 reseachers Gockel and Bergwitz independently did measurements of radiation at high altitudes from a hot air balloon. If radiation was coming entirely from the ground, one would expect that it would decrease in intensity dramatically with height, being absorbed by the atmosphere. Gockel measured a surprisingly small decrease, suggesting atmospheric radiation, while Bergwitz measured a large decrease, suggesting none.

However, the nature of ballooning meant that the measurements were necessarily of short duration; because it was well-known that radioactivity varied on a daily cycle, and was subject to weather conditions, the results were ambiguous. Also, the motion of the balloon meant that the altitude and location of the balloon during measurements was uncertain. A stable high altitude platform was evidently needed to get to the bottom of the mystery. Fortunately for Wulf, he lived within a half-day's travel of the undisputed tallest building of the world at the time: the Eiffel Tower.

Right: Lightning strikes the tower in June 1902. (Image from  Wikipedia.)

One does not naturally think of scientific research when thinking of the Eiffel Tower, but in fact science played a significant role in the acceptance and survival of the tower. It was proposed to be the centerpiece of the 1889 World's Fair, but from the moment of its introduction, it was criticized as an ugly monstrosity by many of the leading intellectuals in Paris. No building of its size and nature had ever been built before, and others worried that it would collapse into the city.

Especially curious in a city known for its aesthetic sense, numerous opponents complained that the tower would serve no useful purpose! Gustave Eiffel, the designer of the edifice, countered this by arguing that the tower -- to be the tallest in the world at 300 m -- would be a unique laboratory for scientific experiments. A sample of his arguments can be found in an article published in 1889, after the completion of the structure [2]:

"It will be moreover a wonderful meteorological observatory, whence the direction and the force of atmospheric currents can be usefully studied, from the point of view of science and hygiene, as well as the condition and the chemical composition of the atmosphere, the amount of electricity and moisture it contains, the variations of temperature at different heights, atmospherical polarization, etc. It is specially adapted for an astronomical observatory; for the purity of the air at this great height baout the low-lying mists, which so often cloud the horizon of Paris, will allow a number of observations often impossible in our climate.

I will not weary my readers with the enumeration of all the experiments to be made on the tower, of which a programme has been already drawn up by our scientific men, and which include the study of the fall of bodies through the air, the resistance of the air to varying velocities, certain laws of elasticity, the study of the compression of gases of vapors under the pressure of an immense manometer of 400 atmospheres, a new realization on a great scale of Foucault's pendulum demonstrating the rotation of the earth, the deviation toward the East of a falling body, etc., etc.; lastly, a serious of physiological experiments of the deepest interest.

I may even go so far as to say that there are few scientific men who do not hope at this moment to carry out, by the help of the tower, some experiment connected more especially with their own investigations."

Eiffel's worries didn't end when the fair opened, either: the initial contract specified that the tower was to remain standing for twenty years -- until 1909 -- and then be torn down. It earned a reprieve until 1915 due to its perceived scientific and military applications, the latter being its use as a tower for the new-fangled wireless telegraphy. When World War I broke out in 1914, the tower became an important broadcast and monitoring station, and its safety was almost assured [3].

Before that, experiments helped justify its existence. Eiffel himself used the tower as a platform for aviation and wind experiments, and his weather station would prove useful for Wulf's experiments. French astronomer Pierre Jules César Janssen used the searchlight at the top of the Eiffel Tower to demonstrate that the spectral lines of oxygen found in the sun's rays were purely of terrestrial origin.

Not all experiments went as planned, however. In 1912, Austrian tailor and parachute pioneer  Franz Reichelt earned permission to test his prototype "parachute suit" on a dummy dropped from the tower. On reaching the top, however, he instead tested the suit himself, which failed to open, and he plummeted to his death.

Left: Franz Reichelt (1879-1912), wearing the parachute suit that led to his death. (Image from Wikipedia.)

Theodor Wulf had a much more reasonable research program in mind. Getting permission to do radiation measurements at the Eiffel Tower with the help of French colleagues  Jules Violle and Paul Langevin, he planned a four-day series of measurements at the top of the tower over the Easter week of 1910. Those measurements were bracketed by a pair of measurements at the foot of the tower, and those in turn were bracketed by measurements in his home Valkenburg. The results were published in the journal Physikalische Zeitschrift in 1910 [4], and the main data are presented in the figure below.

Right: The results of Wulf's radiation measurements at the Eiffel Tower, reproduced from [4].

The units of measurement are ions per cubic centimeter per second. It can be seen that the radiation rate is slightly lower on the top of the Eiffel Tower (Eiffelturm) than on the bottom (boden). The devil, here, is in the details: from other experiments, it was known that the intensity of radioactivity from radium drops by half after traveling through 80 meters of air. Considering the 300 meter height of the tower, if radioactivity were coming entirely from the ground, the radiation at the top of the tower should have been only a few percent of the level at the bottom. Wulf himself concluded that (translation mine):

"The attempts made so far therefore require either, excluding the earth's crust, another source of gamma-rays in the higher layers of air or a much weaker absorption in the air than is previously thought."

What Wulf had done was provided the first significant evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial radiation, now referred to as  cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are particles, usually individual protons, that enter our atmosphere at ultra-high energies traveling at very near the speed of light. The term is used to loosely group together extraterrestrial particles from a variety of sources, including those ejected from the sun as well as those that come from elsewhere in our galaxy, and even beyond. The exact origins of cosmic rays is still a matter of debate, though the accepted hypothesis is that they are ejected from supernovas and propelled to high energies by the accompanying shockwave and magnetic field.

The original (primary) cosmic rays are hardly ever observed on earth. The high-energy protons collide with molecules in the upper atmosphere and give birth to a cascade of secondary particles in what is generally referred to as an air shower. These air showers include a variety of elementary particles, including pions, gamma rays, and  muons, the latter of which are most likely to survive to be detected at the surface. It is these muons that Wulf and others were detecting in their experiments.

Left: A simulation of an air shower hitting the area of downtown Chicago, in which a high-energy proton converts its energy into a cascade of secondary particles. (Figure from the AIRES project homepage.)

Alas for Wulf, his discovery seems to have attracted little attention and was mostly discounted in his time. In 1912, Austrian physicist  Victor Hess undertook a series of high-altitude balloon experiments, in which he found that the radiation intensity increased from 1 kilometer upwards, and was several times the ground level intensity at 5 kilometers high.

Also, he measured the radiation levels in a balloon during a solar eclipse and found that they did not appreciably decrease; this suggested that the cosmic rays were mostly coming from a source other than the sun. In 1936, Hess was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of cosmic rays, sharing the prize with Carl Anderson, the discoverer of the positron; Wulf was nowhere mentioned.

It is natural to wonder why Wulf did not get wider recognition for his experiment, which gave evidence for cosmic rays years before Hess. Putting aside the inevitable politics that is involved in Nobel decisions, Wulf's experiment may have been hamstrung by the uniqueness of the Eiffel Tower itself. As the tallest building in the world and one of the largest metal structures in the world at the time, Wulf himself admitted that he could not discount the possibility that the tower was attracting radioactive materials to itself by some previously unknown phenomenon.

Furthermore, as his quote above indicates, he also could not dismiss the possibility that the radiation from the ground was being absorbed less by the air than expected. Hess' measurement of an increase in radiation at altitude was unambiguous evidence for the direction of the radiation.

In any case, Wulf's discovery heralded the opening of a new field of experimental research -- what better place for it to happen than on a tower that heralded a new era of architectural ingenuity?