JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

There is probably a more elegant way of asking this question and still be catchy/popular, like “Speed of Stuff” or “On the Speed of Stuff” or some such–fact is though I should have begun a series by this (sort of) name years ago. It is a nice catch-all for mostly unrelated stuff, except for the “speed” part, which would be a nice thread.  In any event, I came upon this article today while looking for the beautifully-named Fleeming Jenkin article on a very unusual telegraph. It appeared in the May 5, 1870 issue of Nature, which is actually the first series in volume II of the then brand-new journal, and this was just issue #27. But right up front in this issue was a great-looking paper by a “M. Foster” called “The Velocity of Thought”. (This was not by a wonderful Mr. Foster from high school who warned us kinds in 1970 that we will one day be fighting in Afghanistan, “you mark my words,boys”–a bold position given that we still had a few years to go in Vietnam at that point.) I think that this “M. Foster” is Professor Michael Foster, who in time would add (if he hadn’t already) an M.D. and then a F.R.S. to his surname.  In any event I append the entire article below, which I found online at the University of Wisconsin.

(I should add that there is a nice book review by the great W. Stanley Jevons in this issue as well–anyone interested in purchasing the original issue cane write me at the addy found in the “About” section of this blog.)

[Article image source:  http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/HistSciTech/HistSciTech-idx?type=turn&entity=HistSciTech.Nature18700505.p0004&id=HistSciTech.Nature18700505&isize=M]