JF Ptak Science Books – A Daily History of Holes, Dots, Lines, Science, History, Math, Physics, Art, the Unintentional Absurd, Architecture, Maps, Data Visualization, Blank and Missing Things, and so on. |1.6 million words, 7500 images, 4.9 million hits| Press & appearances in The Times, Le Figaro, Mensa, The Economist, The Guardian, Discovery News, Slate, Le Monde, Sci American Blogs, Le Pont, and many other places… 5000+ total posts since 2008.

JF Ptak Science Books

A Daily History of Holes, Dots, Lines, Science, History, Math, Physics, Art, the Unintentional Absurd, Architecture, Maps, Data Visualization, Blank and Missing Things, and so on. |1.6 million words, 7500 images, 4.9 million hits| Press & appearances in The Times, Le Figaro, Mensa, The Economist, The Guardian, Discovery News, Slate, Le Monde, Sci American Blogs, Le Pont, and many other places… 5000+ total posts since 2008.

Contact johnfptak at gmail dot com

The Not-so-Shiny Diamond: Mining Compounds, South Africa, 1906
JF Ptak Science Books Post 2815

I uncovered a little cache of National Geographic magazines from 1900-1915, and picked out the 1906 volume to have a look at what I hoped for would be photo coverage of the San Francisco earthquake. There’s a good and very strikingly-illustrated article to be found there, but what got my real attention was the article “The Diamond Mines of South Africa”. Actually it was one photograph that grabbed me away from the rest of the book—an image of a diamond miner who was caught stealing diamonds from the mine, extracted during his shift. It is a singularly sad photo—the man’s face is pained and troubled, standing there behind a mine official, naked, and wearing gigantic baseball mitt type gloves with a heavy chain.

Here are a few questions that sprang to mind: Who were the workers? How did they steal” How did the company catch them? How did the company prevent such theft?

In this case the theft occurred in one of the De Beers mining facilities in South Africa. Although De Beers used convict labor, at this camp the workers were there of their own free will (I guess), joining the company to work for periods of about three months.

“To enter the service of the company, each applicant must sign a written con tract binding himself to live in the com pound and work continuously and faith fully for a period of at least three months or longer if he so desires. At the expiration of a contract the applicant may leave if he chooses or his contract may be renewed indefinitely. Some of the natives in De Beers compound have been employed continuously for ten years or more in the service of the company,…”

Once the contract was signed, the agreement was strictly enforced,and the lifestyle of all who worked at the mind seemed to become of one solid mass, the workers held there life inmates. It looks as though every aspect of their lives was regulated, not the least of which involved travel outside the compound or interacting with any outsiders—this to prevent the theft and exchange of diamonds.

The article describe the general layouts of the compounds housing the diamond workers: there were 17 in the diamond fields, 12 owned by De Beer. The largest belonged to De Beer: it was 4 acres and held 3,000 workers, who were contained in the area by 10′ tall corrugated iron fences; they slept 20-25 to a 25’x30′ room. 3K people on 4 acres is a huge number:
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Social History
Howl’s Moving Castle, 1774

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This really has nothing to do with Hayao Miyazaki.’s world, though it does look as though it could be part of it—absent the need for and presence of water and imagining the anchor lines as legs. That’s what I see, anyway, in this beautiful plate of a river/port dredger. It is found in the French edition of Corneille Redelyheid’s La noivelle machine a creuser les ports et les rivieres (printed by the author in the Hague in 1774). The document (only 16pp long) describes the vessel and its uses—the engraving shows the scoops/bucket ladders in the middle of the boat—they would gobble up whatever the target was, with the refuse deposited in the two skiffs on either side of the boat. Its a lovely object, and if you close your eyes halfway the vessel takes on a vague absurdist patina, as though it was a massive SomeThing being propelled or skipped about on long excessively skinny legs. I like it.

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Absurdist, Unintentional
An 8,000-mile Cruising Range Flying Wing, 1943

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This is not the first appearance of a proposed “flying wing”, though it seems to me that it is one of the biggest. This version—the idea of Horace Chapman Young (of the Aerodynamic Research Corporation) and Eric Langlands—appeared in the pages of Popular Science magazine in February 1943. It is a “combination of airship and airplane”, and was filled with helium and hope. It is also 69′ tall, and 250 feet long (!), one version of the aircraft of which was made to handle an airport of 12 planes on a 180’x200′ airstrip, which brings just that part f the plane in at a little under a half acre. It pulled and pushed itself through the air at a not-blazing 30-75mph—however, it was supposed to keep that speed for a cruising time of 270 hours, which is enormous. I like the idea of this beautiful beast, from its slightly manta-ray face down to its 30mph takeoff speed.

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Aviation & flight — Technology, History of
The Epicenter of Visualized Geography: School! (1889)

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Knowing of my interest in antiquarian children’s art, a new friend sent me a 19th century school geography which sports several tattoos of artistic efforts made by small hands. The canvas is the book, and the artwork (and annotations) were occasional scribbles and doodles that speak to the overall essence of kid art, and which have more or less looked the same-ish for centuries. (The subjects will change, but the manner seems to me to remain constant.) In this case the child chose James Moneith’s Elementary Geography (1889) to work in and on, and it is here in the opening pages that we see the exacting placement of “school”. As much as I am interested in the Found Art in this book, I’ve gotta say that this printed image was nearly as surprising–it is also one that I do not recall seeing, even in these popular multi-editioned geography textbooks. The image graphically displays a dozen or two of the central words in the study of geography, and at the center of it all, with directional arrows point all the way around, was “School”. You can’t really argue much with that.

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Maps/Diagrams of Imagination & Ideas
Shopping at Home in a Store (1916)

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I’ve made several entries to this blog on the history of the pre-history of the Internet of Stuff and Things, inventions and contrivances that were in their sometimes-quirky ways a taste of the stuff of what was to be…or if you applied some imagination to it, that is what they could seem to be. (Of the things that could be, there are those things that might be, and can be, and of course those that shouldn’t be–but that’s another story.) In this image, taken from the front page of the magazine Popular Mechanics for March 1916 we see something from the future, though as is usually the case the implemented future-vision that actually takes place is far more elegant than what the imagined-future suggested. In this instance we see someone sampling clothing and seeing their reflection wearing that clothing though not actually trying any of it on–this is commonplace now, but back in 1916 it wasn’t, and mostly didn’t even exist. Of course you’d still have to go to a clothier to use this device, which means that all of the effort in trying on new clothing would be present except for the final part of actually trying the clothing on. And given the encumbrances of the technology, the whole thing sounds as though it would take more time to use than the time it was supposed to save. Anyway the device was interesting, though there are probably failing marks for the temporal economics of the thing.

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Future, History of the — History of the Future
The Fluttering Wings of Destruction: the Who-What-When-Why-How Pamphlet of Nazi Propaganda, 1930.
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This compact 24-page 25-pfennig 1930 work by Gabriel Stark and Heinrich Himmler was one of the earliest pieces produced by the Nazis on how to best expose the public to National Socialism, and given its size and near-free price, it was meant to be distributed far and wide. (There was an earlier and leaner work published by the NSDAP and written by Georg Strasser and Himmler, Propaganda Abteilung, in 1927, and which was a basic how-to booklet.) It developed the need for propaganda as well as the motivation of it, plus there’s a lot of practical discussion on how to best get their message across to different sorts of crowds.

The pamphlet is divided into sections on spreading propaganda by the spoken word, written word, mass marches, and “cultural gatherings”, and subdivides each section accordingly. For the written word, for example, there is a longish discussion of advertising, putting displays on rooftops, [placing posters along railway lines, postcards, banners, letter-writing, stamps, advertisements, and movies and slide shows. (There is also a warning that it was illegal to use windows, streets, buildings and such to paste placards and posters on.) Each one of these has a short section on their philosophy and use, as with sticker placement (“Not much needs to be said about the effectiveness of stickers. Their task is to be a constant reminder to the indifferent and to gradually unsettle them…”)

The section on flyers states: “flyers in various colors, but with identical slogans, some with caricatures, spread through entire city districts are effective”. And “The leaflet should contain a brief, easily understandable idea.” For example:

Against Marxism and Reaction / the National Socialists!

For Freedom and Bread / the National Socialists!

Your greeting / Heil Hitler!

Down with the Party Corpses! / Power to the National Socialists!

The NSDAP has the welfare of the city in mind.

And of course you may get help with slogans by sending a letter to the propaganda department.

Here’s another bit: “All flyers, leaflets, posters, and so on that are posted should be attached in a way that makes them difficult to remove.” Not only that, but these things shouldn’t be delivered in a vacuum: “Leaflets, free newspapers, and brochures should be distributed only in such places where it is likely that they will be read immediately.” And while flyers and leaflets were highly useful, “Posters, despite their considerable cost, are the best form of propaganda, and in relation to their cost”.

The pamphlet extols the reader to demand/request the NSDAP newspaper basically wherever printed material was sold: “Each party member must ask for our newspapers in all restaurants, railway stations, newspaper kiosks, and so on.”

I can’t do much more work on this thing—I think I’ve provided enough info for you to understand the background of the NSDAP method of spreading their propaganda.

Lastly, here are a few more examples of the Starke/Hinnler observations:

“The other way to chose meeting themes is to find sensational events, scandals of the Jews or Marxists, in particular events that can be summarized in three or four words.”

“Meeting protection should be assured either by a sufficient number of local or neighboring S.A. men”

“Attendance by party members is both expected and tactically necessary, given the opponents.”

“ Each meeting is to be closed by the chairman with a “Heil” to National Socialism and our … Hitler”

“Singing a song at the conclusion of a meeting makes sense only if this can be done well.”

“Choruses supported by a trumpet are effective. Several short, compelling sentences, repeated often, have a strong effect on a meeting. Be sure they have practiced, and are not in an awkward position.”
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World War II
The Return of the Tall, Skinny Ladder (1885)

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Here’s an unexpected and fine detail, found in the 19th century photograph described below:

There’s a seldom-used category on this blog concentrating on the concentrated viewing of antique images–that is, using your paper microscope to find the bits and bobs within complex imagery. Sometimes the found landscapes and portraits are purely serendipitous, and other times–mainly in engravings and woodcuts–there are details manufactured by an amused and perhaps bored artist, looking for a little entertainment and fun by burying an unusual vignette or detail in the mass of a large image. Today’s example is simply a photograph of the busy Westminster road, Piccadilly, made around 1880-1885–the image is fine enough to withstand some relatively deep probing, even with a 3200 dpi scan. The image as it stands is very attractive, but once you start a strong look at it there’s a lot more going on. (This works out even better under a microscope, but I don’t have an optical attachment for it for my camera.)

For example, its easy to overlook the street sweepers (at lower right), the pair of them working side-by-side in the midst of the bustling road traffic:

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Photography — Zoomology
ROYGBV, ROYGBIV, and Waiting for Josef Albers

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What’s the dealing with indigo—the missing “I” in ROYGBV—anyway? And what about cyan? And what about those blocks of colors at the bottom, at this time in print history waiting for the appearance of Josef Albers to put them to artistic use in contradistinction? There’s so much is so relatively little in this tiny part of the em spectrum, sandwiched there between UV and IR, and that sandwiched by X- and microwaves, and then gamma and radio waves?

I guess this print calls out for a little bit on color and music and the piano, but not tonight.

Source: unknown, though I’d guess this to be printed ca. 1900.

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Color & its advanced Abuses — Color Theory
A Crowd of Smiles (1945)

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I’ve written a number of posts on this blog on dense crowd imagery in photographs–parades, armies, union marches, protests, celebrations, work environments, and so on,not the least of which are the famous Weegee million-person-Coney-Island beach scenes. (All of these are findable via the Google search box at right.) Today’s installment is the back cover of a small pamphlet called Your City, a Handbook for the Citizens of Liverpool, which is a short guide to the nuts-and-bolts of living there. The remarkable thing about the dense crowd photo is that so many of the people are smiling, which to my experience is not a common thing. Since this pamphlet was published in October 1945 my guess is that the crowd formed in celebration for the end of WWII in Europe or Japan, resulting in this photograph of 2,000 smiles.

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Books–Great Cover Art
Social Life on the pre-Internet (1922)

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The “pre-Internet” here of course is radio, just as the wired telegraph was the pre-radio, and so on down the turtle stack, and these images and stories from Illustrated World from 1922 celebrate the newness of that invention. The thing about radio though was that the makings for commercial broadcast radio were in place for a good solid decade–maybe even 15 years–before the bright idea landed within someone to broadcast on radio out into the rest of the U.S. That first honor belongs to KDKA, using Westinghouse equipment and operating from “east Pittsburgh” on November 2, 1920, and discussing the presidential election returns for the Harding-Cox context…and delivering the news so that people could hear it before they read it. By the time these covers appear in IW radio broadcasting was two years deep, and the idea of expanding the medium’s scope was certainly presenting itself–people had gotten married and played checkers before remotely by telegraph, but with some time-lag; and certainly there was no sound involved. This was pretty hot stuff in 1922, a real barometric increase in the possibilities of electronics. (By the way, just two years later, in 1924, there would be 600 commercial broadcast stations, and another three years later RCA would found NBC and go nation-wide.)

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Anticipation, History of — Technology, History of
A Nasty Piece of Propaganda from French Collaborationists (1943)

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The offending pamphlet here is a celebration of the invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany, a “two year anniversary” of the beginning of “Operation Barbarossa”. The author(s) presented the new front in WWII as a “joined” effort on the part of European nations to rid the world of the Bolshevik threat. (The title of the work: Toute l’Europe contre le Bolchevisme, 2^eme Anniversaire which was published by CEA, the Centre d’Etude Antibolchéviquethe (Anti-Bolshevik Studies organization), a French organization running with Nazi funding.)

The pamphlet of course fails to mention the turning of the tide against the Germans, especially with the defeat and destruction of von Paulus and the 6th Army at Stalingrad in January/February 1943, the failure of the Caucasus push, and so on. Then again, this is a piece of propaganda, and facts can be conveniently excluded whenever necessary. A few pages later by the way there is the introduction of Bolshevism being the invention of “International Judaism” and other anti-Semitic lies that was an attempt to perpetuate the fiction of the Nazis and the Allies working together to defeat Stalin and his Jewish co-conspirators in quest of world domination.. Besides the text supporting this stab-in-the-heart thinking is a horrible caricature of “international Jewry” combining with Bolshevism and Freemasonry (?) as a force out to capture the world.

Events antithetical to this propaganda were excluded–I did check out some of the numbers for the battle represented below (like Smolensk and Vizma (Moscow) and those are correct…these battles were mainly fought in 1941/early 1942 at which point the Nazi offensive was still going forward, so there’s not much from 1943. So numbers and events that supported the crucially insane claims of the pamphlet were used; everything else was ignored or re-packaged with false data and employed.

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Bad Ideas — Maps/Diagrams of Imagination & Ideas — World War II