JF Ptak Science Books      Post #81(from 2008, expanded)

These lovely images weren’t intended to show people living in the Renaissance and Baroque eras how to actually record data on their hands—they were intended rather as templates to show how they could use their fingers and hands for calculating and as memory devices.  Much like Frances Yates has shown us so beautifully in The Art of Memory and how info and data was stored in imagined and compartmental palaces in the mind (relying upon images), the hands were also used as a theatre of memory in addition to extended calculation. 

These mnemonic devices were necessary—especially during the Renaissance—because of the general lack of and access to affordable vellums or paper and writing instruments.  Having notebooks filled with memoir or history of calculation was generally not something that was happening for even the not-wealthy but not struggling class.  These mental images were used widely in the areas of religion, palmistry, astrology mathematics, astronomy, astrology, alchemy, music, and other such fields. 

The first image (from a German manuscript) of the hand-theatre was found and deciphered by Claire Richter Sherman (Folger Shakespeare Theatre) and is religious in nature, an intentional piece of memory for the devoted and for devotions.  The needs of religion were splayed out as the hand was opened and fingers flexed, and working from thumb to pinkie, from finger tip and joint—“do God’s will, examine  your conscience, repent, confess”, and so on, and above all be content with your lowly penitente stature.  If there were 28 of these admonitions or reminders at different points of the hand and you memorized them all, it would be a much simpler time to recall and keep them in order if you merely had to touch a part of your hand where that memory should be to invoke what it was you were supposed to do.  Therefore you could theoretically cast about with your creator with your hands in your pockets—if you had pockets. 

The next two images (including the enlargement of the hand section) are from a work from 1587 entitled Musique and are attributed to John Cousin the Younger (1522-1597).
The basic premise for this device—it seems to me—was to be able to order the different chords of 20 different instruments. 

Another musical hand mnemonic was the Guidonian hand, a survivor of Medieval times, and possibly named after Guido of Arezzo (a musical theorist), and was an aid to singers learning to sight sing.   

The entry for the Guidonian hand in Wiki explains it use rather well:  “The idea of the Guidonian hand is that each portion of the hand represents a specific note within the hexachord system, which spans nearly three octaves from “Γ ut” (that is, “Gamma ut”) (the contraction of which is “gamut”, which can refer to the entire span) to “E la” (in other words, from the G at the bottom of the modern bass clef to the E at the top of the treble clef). In teaching, an instructor would indicate a series of notes by pointing to them on their hand, and the students would sing them. This is similar to the system of hand signals sometimes used in conjunction with solfege…”

The final two examples come from Jakob Leupold’s  (1674-1727) Theatrum Machinarum (1724)—this was a complex work involving nine sections and addressed the theoretical  aspirations of engineering (load, flexure, that sort) and its applications to its daily practitioners.  In one section of the book he sought to explain the connections (and correlations) of hand motion and symbolism to the origins of the number systems, carrying it out further still into body language, so that two people conversant in these symbols could talk and bargain between themselves in economic/body terms.  Barbara Maria Stafford, in her Artful Science, Enlightenment,

Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education (1994) points out the long history of this tradition, and that it reached far back into misty time:  Leupold knew that Appian, the Venerable Bede, and Aventinus had been fascinated by manuloquio, or natural language with the hands.  He thus linked counting to a global….medium of prearranged gestures…”

JF Ptak  Quick Post

Before-and-after–I’d like to see more of these, even the contemporary postcard image versus documentary photograph would do, as I suspect virtually no postcard of a motel ever made would look of a lesser quality than a true representational photographic image of the place. Sixty years certainly makes the difference, especially with the bypassing of what used to be important thoroughfares and what happens nest.  There is still a mountain view,though I can’t tell which mountain it is, though for Alabama it does get hilly in Fort Payne.  

I’d love to stay in a motel like this.  Then.  

And today:

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

There’s something about the design of the kettering on the sides of railway cars that is very attractive–for the most part, the lettering just looks “correct”.  I’ve collected a few examples, used librarlly from the University of Pennsylvania library, and tiled them below, and are from a series of photographs made in the 1880’s of the Harrisburg Car Co (established 1853).

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2267 

Thomas Nast, the great social commentator and cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly magazine through the course of the Civil War and into the 1880’s, ddrew this fantastic allegorical image called “The Emancipation of the Negroes, January, 1863—The Past and the Future,”which was published just weeks after the Proclamation was issued in January 1863. Nast (1840-1902) was an extraordinary talent who created the politically/socially influential political cartoon.  He worked tirelessly for Harper’s Weekly, joining the weekly illustrated newspaper in 1858 at the age of 19, contributing at least one large (usually front cover) political statement and two smaller cartoons every week, for 26 years. He wielded an enormous social influence, electing a president (Hayes) and toppling Boss Tweed.  He was a staunch Republican who endlessly fought for balanced budgets, free education, and equal rights for Indians and Blacks, fair economic play to the working classes, and was viciously anti Klan.  He also created the popular images of Santa Claus, Uncle Sam, the Republican elephant Democrat donkey, and the Tammany tiger.

The Emancipation image was perhaps one of his greatest early efforts–it is a strong image, holding nothing back.  On either side of the main/central figure is the Good/Evil of the African American’experience, showing whipping, branding,the very dogs of war let loose on runaway slaves. In the middle-left we see a truly heartbreaking scene (enlarged below) depicting a “Public Sale/Negroes”, with families being torn apart, broken in front of themselves, the husband/father pleading while the wife/mother with children beg for the atrocity to end. Nast was not afraid to use children in his images to makes his point, and it seems to me to be a rare practice. (This would continue throughout his career, especially in his depicting of the Hamburg S.C. massacre in which he shows a murdered Black baby–very tough stuff now but ever more so for 1876. He used children to make political points, showing them terrified and in fear of some monstrous public act,m and rightfully so, because children are always effected, and Nast was determined not to shield his viewers/readers from the baseline truth.)

Here’s a very shocking example of this work, showing a terrified child reacting to his father being arrested for stealing bread for his starving family.  It is from his work “Wholesale and Retial”, a piece on Corporate Pig Thievery, and contrasts Tweed-like figures in the panel below stealing from a bank with teh approval of saluting cops.  (I’ve written about this image here.)

[Image source: http://thomasnastcartoons.com/2012/06/02/irish-as-sub-human/the-emancipation-of-the-negrosnjan-24-1863/#main]

On the right side of the image are scenes of tranquility, with people lined up to receive pay for work done, and children dashing off to school. 

The central image is significant, because it is simple and shows a scene of domesticity and happiness, and applies it to the African American. It establishes a new sense of “normalcy” or a common standard, at least in theory.  To me it is a radical image. It shows a father in slippers bouncing one of his four children on his knee in front of a lighted stove, seated in a good chair.  Grandma looks in on the scene, the mother looks on; a younger son pauses from reading to watch, while in the background the older son seems very interested in a courtship with a young lady.  On the wall in the background is a portrait of Lincoln, with a banjo hanging up next to it. 

Above the image is a somewhat squishy Columbia–the symbol of America–dividing the hellish scene left and grateful and hopeful scene to the right, with Justice and cheering soldiers just to Columbia’s left hand.  At the bottom of the central image we see Father Time holding the infant New Year, freeing a slave, the baby doing something on the first day of 1863 that the old man could not accomplish in the year(s) previous.

The image is complex and textured, a standard of Nast’s work–and this one, unlike most of his efforts, is one of celebration and hope. 

JF Ptak Science Books

This is one of approximately 250 photographs in a small collection of World War I News Photo Service photographic images, all made in 1918.  Photography during WWI was extremely controlled, and many of the images that came to appear in newspapers and magazines were selection from an approved photographic pool of images.

Image of three women as volunteers–the woman in the foreground is actually standing even though it looks as though she is kneeling; the other two women are standing on trash cans to get the upper hand on the horse.  This is a simple and lovely image that can be purchased this blog’s WWI photo store, here. 

Detail:

And–in the upper left corner, a man leans from a window for a better look: