JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Source: unknown (perhaps Thomas Simpson, Elements of Geometry…?)
Author: JF Ptak
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The “Endless Immensity” of Thomas Wright, 1750
JF Ptak Science Books
Thomas Wright (1711-1786) saw about as deeply into the deep as just about anyone else–he looked into the night sky and pretty much saw all of it. In his book, An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe, Founded upon the Laws of Nature1, he described a version of the universe that was influential in the thinking of Kant and Herschel, finding a rectangular/squashed “finite infinity” of stars, “a vast infinite Gulph, or Medium, every Way extended like a Plane, and inclosed between two Surfaces”.
Our Milky Way, which at the time was thought to be the entire universe rather than a galaxy as it was later discovered to be–one galaxy in a seemingly endless sea of galaxies–was presciently seen by Wilkins as being but one assembly of stars in an “endless immensity” of stars:
“And farther since without any impiety; since
as the creation is, so is the Creator also magni-
fied, we may conclude in consequence of an in-
finity, and an infinite all-active power; that is
the visible creation is supposed to be full of si-
derial systems and planetay worlds, so on, in
like similar manner, the endless immensity is an
unlimited plenum of creations not unlike the
known Universe.”–page 143. (Again, the “Universe” referred to here is the Milky Way galaxy.)Wright’s vision of this plethora of universes, in which each creation is one like the Milky Way–a radical thought in 1750:
And another view of this idea, from Wright’s A synopsis of the universe, or, the visible world epitomiz’d (1742, being 13 maps on 3 sheets):
[Source: the Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2008621668/ Part of me wants to include the first Wright engraving in this blog’s series on the History of Lines, seeing as how they represent the great Something that seem to be infinitely binding the infinity of universes…]
And another from these sheets:
[Source: the Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2008621668/]
Wright on the “plurality of systems” ( from his An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe … 1750)
Wright also writes on the minuteness of the human condition, of the perfect sense of nothingness that is the Earth in a sea of infinite possibilities of other earths and earthy creations, which was definitely an outpost of thinking in 1750:
“In this great celestial creation, the catastro-
phe of a world, such as ours, or even the to-
tal dissolution of a system of Worlds, may pos-
sibly be no more to the great author of nature,
than the most common accident in life with us,
and in all probability such final and general
doom-days may be as frequent there, as even
birth-days, or mortality with us upon the Earth.
This idea has something so cheerful in it, that
I own I can never look upon the Stars without
wondering why the whole world does not be-
come Astronomers; and that men endowed with
sense and reason, should neglect a science they
are naturally so much interested in, and so ca-
pable of enlarging the understanding, as next to
a demonstration, must convince them of their
immortality, and reconcile them to all those lit-
tle difficulties incident to human nature, with-
out the least anxiety.”–page 132Notes
1. The full title: An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe, Founded upon the Laws of Nature, and solving by Mathematical Principles the General Phenomena of the Visible Creation ; and particularly the Via Lactea. Comprised in Nine Familiar Letters from the Author to his Friend. And illustrated with upwards of thirty graven and mezzo-tinted Plates by the best Masters. London, MDCCL.” Full test, here.
2. An odd note about Thomas Wright’s personal history, from Science, 1902: “A word, in passing, about Wright. Like many another, so unfortunate as to live ere the times were ripe, he has been consigned to unmerited oblivion. Even the writer of the entry upon him in the ‘ Dictionary of National Biography ‘—a work so uniformly accurate — is unaware of the sources from which information could have been obtained, and so has nothing to tell, — does not even know the dates of his birth and death, or why he was called ‘of Durham.”–[Science, N. S. Vol. XIII. No. 321. 2-22-1902
An interesting poem by Rafinesque to start of his edition of Wilkins:
“Where ends the range and limits have been set
To mortal eyes, there mental sight begins
To fathom space, and worlds invisible
Surveys, admires
The mind must feel that space can have no bound*,
Whatever number be of things or thoughts
Others may be beyond—and thus behind
The Nebulas and Belts, our Galaxies
Of stormy clouds and oceans
There stands the central land and throne
Of our wide Universe, the home of Angels,
The seat of Love Divine”
Rafinesque, Poem on Instability, found at the beginning of Rafinesque’s 1837 American edition of Wright’s 1750 work.
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Gigantic and Unbuildable Architecture: Buckminster Fuller’s Midtown Manhattan Dome, 1968
JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post #115 (from 2008, extended a little)
Buckminster Fuller had a lot of good ideas but I’m not so sure that this is one of them. I don’t have much doubt that versions of domed cities will exist in the not-dim future, though I do have doubts that they would be constructed to preserve the bones of antiquated ideas. It seems logical to me that the retrofit of untold millions of cubic feet of city life just couldn’t make sense, even if the square footage was in Manhattan.Domed cities pop up here and there in speculative/science fiction in the 1960’s (though there is a far-deep reference to one from the 1860’s, though that one is under water), and there are many that are sprinkled like seasoning here and there in more modern formats, as with Stephen King’s Under the Dome made into a slappingly-silly tv show of the same name and The Simpson’s movie that Borrows Very Heavily from King. There are others to be sure, though I am more interested in miniature domed underground cities or Lego-made Dyson sphere within a Domed Galaxy.
Fuller’s idea (working with Shoji Sadao) is multiple orders of magnitude removed from the original idea of the arcade (like the passage Choiseul, located in the second arrondissement of Paris), envisioning the construction of a dome to encapsulate NYC from the East River to the Hudson along 42nd St, and from 64th to 22nd St: that is two miles in diameter and, plus at least a half-mile high (or about 2.5 Empire State Buildings pile one on top of the other at zenith sector). I’m not so sure how this would be built, or how things would be heated or (especially) cooled, or what the construction material was for the skin of the dome, or how people get in and out, or how you deal with heating and cooling, or how any noxious chemicals are expelled—but Mr. Fuller thought that the savings alone from snow removal from NYC streets would pay for the dome in ten years. (That would maybe work out–the snow-removal analogy–if someone had asked Mr. Fuller exactly how much snow he was talking about…)
Mr. Fuller also thought that the dome would protect the city (or this part f the city) from radiation fallout. That could be true, assuming that of all the hundreds of nuclear warheads that the Soviets would’ve launched against NYC alone none of them would’ve found their target, except perhaps for the Ridgways or Staten Island, where the shock wave or winds produced by ensuing firestorms would not have disturbed the dome. Of course if a warhead actually came close—or actually hit—the dome, the protection from radiation would be moot.
Source: Buckminster Fuller in Think magazine, vol 34, Jan/Feb 1968. AND of course the lovely work by Alison and Sky Michele Stone, Unbuilt America, McGraw Hill, 1976, pg. 99.
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Germany/Czechoslovakia, 1932
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
The quick post this morning centers on design and the presentation of information–and it comes from a very uncommon and unsavory source. The pamphlet is by Rudolf Kasper, Sudetendeutsche Wirtschaftsnot! : Der Niedergang der sudetendeutschen.Wirtschaft seine Ursachen und der neue Weg zu Arbeit, Freiheit und Brot which on the cover of the publication becomes Volk in Not. It was published in 1932 by DNSAP (German National Socialist Workers’ Party), which was an anti-Communist, anti-Capitalist, anti-Semitic, and other anti- things, and written by the German Nationalist Kasper, who after the Czech sell-out and invasion of 1938 became a Nazi and ultimately a Waffen SS. Well, penultimately he became a prisoner of the Soviets and then ultimately dead at their hands, somehow, in 1947, under unknown conditions. (As Mr. Vonnegut would say, “so it goes”.) The pamphlet is an appeal to the Sudeten Germans, offering an explanation for their failure at teh hands of the Czechs as well as a broad determination of how to fix things for the future, fixing the unemployment situation (there and so far as I can tell worldwide) for people to have a chance at “Work, Freedom, and Bread” (“zu Arbeit, Freiheit und Brot”). Ah, yes. Once the Nazis took control in Czechoslovakia, the DNSAP disappeared, outlawed–of course Kasper didn’t and simply moved on to his new Nazisness.
I’m posting about this because the pamphlet just doesn’t appear anywhere–there is only one copy of it located in libraries worldwide (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) according to WorldCat/OCLC–and I just wanted to surface the thing.The montage cover (8″x 5″):
And the display of the unemployed (2″x 2.5″):
(“You are Suffering Famine and Distress!”) So, there you have it. There’s a lot of unpleasant stuff in this pamphlet that would be fervent feed for the developing downfall of Czechoslovakia six years hence, though we don’t need to get into that where–as I said, I just wanted to surface this pamphlet and bring some notice to its existence.
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History of Heavy: German Graphical Design, 1925
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
I’ve posted before under this title (just scout under “German design” in the google box) and decided to add this one because of its heavy-obviousness, and also because of a heavy-missing element. The image in question is from an ad in an odd publication celebrating/promoting Essen businesses, Essener Pressefest, 1925–at least that is what I think it is. The pamphlet has a lot of advertising from what looks to be small firms, but there is nothing there whatsoever regarding Krupp, which had been established in Essen for two centuries at least. Nor were there any other ads for anything else in the heavy department or what could have led to the city being called the Armament Maker of the Reich, and which would ultimately lead to Essen being mainly totally razed after 270-odd Allied bombing raids on the city during WWII. So, no Krupp, but there was a two-page illustrated something-or-other on marionette theaters–marionettes, puppets, paper theater all have their place in the world, but I wonder what the place was when Krupp et alia are nowhere to be found? No doubt I’m missing something, or everything–perhaps it had to do with Versailles and the focus was beyond iron works? I don’t know. Anyway, here’s the ad:
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Hitler as Leviathan of the German People; a Map of the Threat to Germany (1936)
JF Ptak Science Books Post 2613
the following two images are found in a small pamphlet on the general election and single-question referendum held in Germany on March 29, 1936 (Des Deutschen Volkes Schicksalswende am 29. Marx). as it turns out the small pamphlet accordion-folded oput to about 2.5 feet, which was printed on both sides. Anyway the single question was whether the voter wanted a single-party representation by the NSDAP in the Reichstag–not surprisingly whatsoever the German population voted/”voted” 99% in favor of the proposal. The pamphlet was a gross propaganda instrument, as was the “election/referendum”, and it contained a number of striking images, though perhaps none so as near-unforgettable as that showing Hitler arising from a living-person map of Germany:
Hitler came to power via a number of elections–he didn’t just take it, or at least not until 1933; 44 million people voted in March 1933 (an 88% turnout), and 17 million voted for the NSDAP and Hitler giving him the popular vote and the most seats in the Reichstag. In the November 1933 (“Ein Volk, Ein Fuhrer, Ein Ja”) elections, 39 million/92% voted for Hitler, which was another story. And here he is, rising from a sea of Germans, three years later, a leader restrictive of enemies and opposition, the whole thing looking horrible.
Here’s another bit from the same 12-panel accordion-fold pamphlet, a propaganda map showing the possibly-invasive weaknesses of the Versailles-dictated German army. AS in the case of several other maps posted to this blog on this 1934-1939 geographic creation of risk and threat, this one depicts a heavily-armed and populated French army looking at Germany, while the relatively-meagre 100,000-man German army quietly protects itself on the borders 50km away from the Rhine. I guess it might have been effective if people were actually voting in this election, for scared people to vote their scared conscience for the man who scared them. The writing however was on the proverbial wall, and the only thing left to do with the Versailles treaty at that point would be to scrap it. About four years later the Nazis would come sweeping down on France and by June 22 the French would be signing a humiliating surrender instrument.
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Cover Design and Industrial Art (1941)
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
I don’t mean to trivialize the contents of this pamphlet by focusing solely on its cover design, but I guess that is what I am doing, not having any real interest in the content. That said, the work is by Bob Edwards (1905-1990) who led a long and very interesting life as a union person, labor organizer, Socialist, MP, and a fighter against the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. (He was also the author of another interesting pamphlet that appears elsewhere on this blog on the British chemical industry in 1944 and its “Nazi associates” https://historyofideasblog.com/thesciencebookstore/2014/09/superior-cover-design-chem-industry-nazism-and-race-suicide-1944.html). In this present pamphlet Edwards looks at the history of the CIO “and the sit-down strikes” while concentrating on its role in the U.S. during WWII. This is pretty dicey stuff (as John Lewis would discover when his vehement pro-Union and non-interventionist/Isolationist policy proposals was defeated by his membership) and rubbed up the wrong way against U.S. defense and war policies. But Edwards was looking for something different, writing in this pamphlet well deep into (the U.K.’s) WWII about the need to change capitalist industry in the U.S. and a “REVOLUTIONARY OCCUPATION OF INDUSTRY” (caps in the original) to be achieved through “Workers Power and Socialism”, all of which would probably not play all that well int eh U.S. at this point. (It is unclear exactly when in 1941 this pamphlet was published, but I assume it is probably after the Nazis ended their cordial entente with the Soviet Union.)
Anyway, there is an interesting history of sit-downs in the pamphlet–I still like it more for its cover, though.
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Steam-Punk Tee-Shirt Rocket Ship Pilots (1932)
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
This creative vision of the future appears in Popular Mechanics (May 1932) and while picturing zeppelin-like space ships with stubby retractable wings traveling at 15,000 mph, it also depicts pilots in a very informal attitude of dress…they’re also in a relatively cavernous command center with big gleaming instruments, including a very large compass and a very impressive graphical printout of some sort. Anyway it looks like a lot of big and heavy stuff in a big and bulky command center, which means the ship would’ve been bigger and bulkier, and who knows what was going to get it to the desired altitude of 600 miles for it to make its 15-minute Paris-Chicago flight. I think the sleeveless underwear deserved an explanation, but it found none.
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The Business-End of a 120′-Tall Fall
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
It might have made it more exciting for the readers to know that the fall would’ve taken about 2.73 seconds from 120′–I think the results are pretty much exactly the same whether the 60mph man was in a car or not so far as the effects of the sudden stop at the bottom goes. In any event, it was an effective way of relating the dangers of ultra-auto-speed in 1932.
[Source: Popular Mechanics, April, 1932, p. 537.]
