Confusion reigned in France 100 years ago; the Dreyfus Affair was nearing its denouement.
Five years previously, in 1894, a young French army captain called Alfred Dreyfus had been sentenced to penal servitude for life on Devil's Island, convicted of spying for the German government.
After two years, however, evidence emerged that the culprit was another person altogether, and l'affaire Dreyfus became the classic cause celebre. People argued about it in the Paris cafes, and wrote articles for newspapers; it was acrimoniously discussed in the corridors of power, and in the relative privacy of family circles.
Suspicion, it was alleged, had fallen on Dreyfus mainly because he was a Jew. But the whole question assumed a significance far wider than the mere guilt or innocence of Alfred Dreyfus: it polarised French society, crystallising the traditional antagonisms between church and state, right and left, Christian and Jew, the aristocracy and the common people, and between the supporters of a monarchy and the more radical republicans.
The real culprit as far as the original crime was concerned was shown to be an impecunious adventurer called Esterhazy, and the retrial that ultimately resulted in Dreyfus's vindication took place at Rennes in Brittany, in 1899.
He was eventually pardoned in September. A century ago today everyone in France was agog to hear the news from Rennes, but a meteorologist rendered the entire proceedings incommunicado.
The use of kites for scientific purposes was very much in vogue around that time. The French scientist, Teisserenc de Bort, at his private observatory at Trappes, near Versailles, was much involved in such activities, attempting to measure temperatures in the upper regions of the atmosphere.
His kite-flying experiments were ultimately to lead to the discovery of the tropopause, a level in the atmosphere at which the temperature ceases to fall with height, and instead remains almost constant or even rises slightly.
Obviously, such adventures required large and sturdy kites, secured by a strong line of some considerable length. On September 9th, 1899, de Bort was pursuing these useful and enjoyable activities, and was reeling in his kites when the line snapped and five miles of piano wire, with 11 kites attached, escaped to drift across the Parisian sky.
The line fouled the propeller of a steamboat on the Seine, almost strangled a gendarme as it trailed across the Bois de Bologne, but worst of all, it severed all the telegraph lines from Brittany to Paris, just at the time the news from Rennes on Dreyfus was eagerly awaited by the outside world.