Author: JF Ptak

From the Department of Hopes and Dreams: the Red Cross, St. John, and POWs (WWII)

JF Ptak Science Books Post 2798

I assembled a little collection of WWII Red Cross and St. John charity pamphlets–what they all share is a sense unity, duty, perseverance, and hope. They are all published between 1942 and 1944, the majority coming in the summer of 1943–a wicked bad time for the Allies, perhaps the worst time since the Nazi onslaught of Europe. Five of these pamphlets directly addressed trying to help the prisoners of war held by Nazi Germany, and portrayed some healthy and sustaining images of the possibilities of POW life, as well as what would seem to be a high chance of delivery all manner of goods to the prisoners to make their time behind barbed wire somewhat more bearable. (Several of these short pamphlets are reproduced below, while the covers of four of them follow):

·Posted by :

JF Ptak

·in:

Anticipation, History of — World War II
Using Darwin to Sell Stuff–an Early Appearance of Marketing Darwin (1877)

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

I can’t be sure of where this stands overall, but it certainly seemed to my reading over the last x-years^xthat using a quote or idea from our Mr. Darwin to sell something in the first decade or two after the publication of On the Origin of Species…. is a rare thing. So seeing this ad in the back of the volume of Popular Science Monthly (1877) was really surprising, as it was taking the phrase we find in Darwin to sell the long-lasting qualities of a life insurance firm. (Well, the phrase actually starts out with Herbert Spencer as he was influence by OTOOS, writing it to express an idea in economics in his Principles of Biology in 1864; Darwin himself adopts it in Variations of Animals and Plants under Domestication in 1868 and then in the fifth edition of OTOOS in 1869. I’ve included a lengthy quote from the Spencer, where the phrase turns out on page 444.) I do have a recollection of a drawing in Punch of a crying Mr. Darwin in a quarter illustration promoting kindness to animals or some such…but offhand there’s no memory of using the man/ideas as a sales vehicle before this. Again, that’s not my field so I may be missing a lot–if you know of other ads like this please let me know.

·Posted by :

JF Ptak

·in:

Anticipation, History of — Questionable Quidity
The Voltaic Armadillo, Electric Earth, and Invisible Reverse Double Dandruff: Quack Medical Ads, 1877.

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post (An entry in the category of Questionable Quidity)

The Popular Science Monthly (today known as Popular Science) was founded in 1872 and treated all manner of scientific/tech subjects for the general reader–most of the time very successfully, though sometimes not-so-much. The issue at had for August 1877 had a number of interesting articles, but my attention was stolen away by a pair of ads in the back of the journal. Remember that there were few (if any) regulatory agencies for advertisements on scientific and medical subjects, which means that people were left to their own devices and internal customary ethics, which were sometimes abided and sometimes not. What I found were two half-page ads for electrical cure-alls, battery-driven devices that were supposed to be a cure and a dependent for just about all things, from dandruff to neuralgia, or the twists or tremors, triple-reverse invisible exuda, marble mouth, inverted feet, and so on. These devices could fix anything because they fixed nothing. The ads were striking, as you can see:

A few pages away the “galvano-caustic” entry by Dr. Jerome Kidder, who both tried to sell his stuff and protect himself from impostures in the same ad. It was the Kidder trademark of the electrical earth surrounded and beset by a field of electrical-something bits and bobs that attracted my attention:

There were other ads in the 1877 volume, though these were the only two of real Charlatanesque sub-virtues.

·Posted by :

JF Ptak

·in:

Questionable Quidity
Charles Babbage, Poet: on Chess and Miracles.
JF Ptak Science Books Post 2797 (extended)

When reading through a volume of the Royal Society’s quarterly publication on the stuff of science (for the year 1817) I came across an article on the Knight’s Tour puzzle: “An Account of Euler’s Method of Solving a Problem, relative to the Move of the Knight at the Game of Chess, from a Correspondent”, and which was published in The Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and the Arts, edited at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, published by John Murray for the Royal Institution, London, 1817-1818. After a little digging to find the authorship, I found that the “Correspondent” here is Mr. Charles Babbage himself, with the authorship established at least by the time of his Passages from the Life of a Philosopher if not before. The Knight’s Tour puzzle–in which a knight is moved around a chessboard (8×8 grid, though smaller and much larger have been used) so that every square is touched only once–is ancient, with the host of the famous 18th century mathematical revelers³ positioning the problem in the dim past, with Lucas in 1882 and then Kraitchik in 1927²fixing it more resolutely in India over 2000 years ago.

Babbage identifies the paper as his own in the section of his own “contributions to human knowledge” in his retrospective, Passages in the Life of a Philosopher, published in 1864. I’ve never read this book though I’ve used bits and pieces for research, and last night and today I’ve read in it quite a bit. Apart from the sheer enjoyment of the power of this guy’s mind, I’m finding the book to be unexpectedly amusing. The man is actually funny, plus witty, and an entertaining writer–why this is so surprising, I don’t know; perhaps it is because he is associated in a personal sense in my mind with General Winfield Scott, as they resemble one another, both looking Very Highly Contentious and gassy. In any event, I can safely say that this is a Good Read.

Now to the Found Poetry part in this bit, the text of which is found in the appendix of the article, in the section called “On Miracles”. The text is as found, though the spacing/structure has been “poematized”to exhibit the great and hidden logical poetry of Mr. Babbage:

On Miracles
```
"1. That there is no real physical distinction between miracles 
and any other operations of the Divine energy: 
that we regard them differently 
is because we are familiar 
with one order of events 
and not the other. 

2. There is nothing incredible in a miracle, 
and the credibility 
of a miraculous event 
is to be measured only by the evidence 
which sustains it. 

And although the extraordinary character 
of a phenomenon may render the event itself improbable, 
it does  not, therefore, necessarily 
render it either 
incredible or untrue."

And the original:
```
There’s a few pages of reasoning before we get to his enumerated “prepositions”, but this should do nicely. The guy was a very very good thinker.

Full text of the article is found here: https://archive.org/stream/passagesfromlif01babbgoog#page/n510/mode/2up

Notes

1. See the “collected works” section in Babbage’s Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864) where he outs himself as the author. https://archive.org/stream/passagesfromlif01babbgoog/passagesfromlif01babbgoog_djvu.txt

2. “Chronology of Knight’s Tours”, compiled by George Jelliss, http://www.mayhematics.com/t/1g.htm

3. Just as a sample the folks working on this puzzle in the 18th c included d’Alembert and Diderot in theEncyclopedie; Jacques Ozanam in Recreations Mathematiques et Physiques; d’Ortous de Mairan, Abraham de Moivre, Pierre Rémond de Montmort; Jean Etienne Montucla,, Leonhard Euler, and many others.

The “Euler” in the title refers to Leonhard Euler “Solution d’une Question Curieuse qui ne Paroit Soumise a Aucune Analyse”, Mémoires de l’Academie Royale des Sciences et Belles Lettres, Année 1759, volume 15, pp.310-337, which was the first mathematical paper on knight’s tours.
·Posted by :

JF Ptak

·in:

Computer Tech/History
History of Lines Department: Supply and Demand (1870)

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

The idea/phrase “supply and demand” goes back a very long way, and gets treated in a more-modern aspect by Locke (1767) and Adam Smith (1776) and David Ricardo (1813) and Thomas Malthus (1803)–however, the first time that the idea was presented graphically came with (the beautifully-named) Fleeming Jenkin in 1870. The famous graph appeared in “Graphic Representation of the Laws of Supply and Demand, their Application to Labour, Part I”, published in Recess Studies, edited by Sir Alexander Grant and published in Edinburgh. And here it is, in brilliant simplicity:

He writes in this paper by way of introduction:

“Supply at a price denotes the quantity which at a given price holders would be then and there willing to sell. Supply at a price is also mensurable Demand at a price denotes the quantity which then and there buyers would purchase at that price. The supply at a price and the demand at a price in any given market will probably vary with the price they may be said to be functions of the price.”

“Let a curve be drawn the abscissae of which represent prices and the ordinates the supplies at each price. This curve will be called the supply curve. A similar curve constructed with the demand at each price as ordinates will be called the demand curve.”

A few notes in support of the Jenkin diagram:

·Posted by :

JF Ptak

·in:

Economics — Information, Quantitative Display of
The Early Use of a Telescope in Crime Detection (1900)

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

Just a quick notice here of an interesting note found in Scientific American (vol 83, no. 4, pg 54) for 28 July 1900:

I wonder if this observation violated the expected zone of privacy of an individual, meaning a violation of the fourth amendment? Now this activity described above in Rochester took place on a bridge, so perhaps there was no expectation of privacy on a public street , especially if you are out-and-about and committing a crime. A quick look at the history of the fourth amendment gets immediately complex to me, and so I’ll leave it alone–except to say that it is not a clear-cut issue as to whether the above use of a telescope would’ve been a search-and-seizure issue. On the other hand, when this issue is discussed the idea of what would be “normally” observable to the unaided eye comes up–but what sort of unaided eye are we talking about? If the eye needed correction, would using eyeglasses constitute a challenge to the fourth amendment? I don’t know, as I’m not a law guy–but the question about the telescope and the fourth amendment seems mildly interesting.

·Posted by :

JF Ptak

·in:

Astronomy
A Giant Metal Kraken Worm, Beast Among Beasts: a Tunneling Machine, 1862
JF Ptak Science Books Post 2790

This enormous piece of machinery was designed and patented by Hubert Newton Penrice (of Norwich¹) in 1862 for “tunneling and driving through rock and other strata”. The section labeled “F” is obviously the grinding business-end of the beast, meant to turn with a “variable” speed–what we see here is the outermost set of teeth which surrounded an unspecified number of smaller concentric cutting plates. I imagine that if you looked at this machine straight-on from the front you’d see a number of concentric rings of hundreds of steel teeth, which immediately makes me think “Kraken!”, though this one is underground, boring its way through rock. No specifics are given for dimensions, though my guess would be that the cutting face had to be at least 8′ (?), meaning that the entire machine was on the order of about 50′.

Originally the steam-driven machine was powered “at a distance” though in this version the boiler and engine are right there behind the cutting face and a car powered to inch froward as the tunneling is done. The boiler would supply several engines–one to drive the cutting wheels, another to feed the machine that “swept” up the cut stone and directed them towards the back of the outfit another to power the forward motion of the whole thing to put pressure on the cutting face, and I think several more. That long shaft along the top of the unit is for “waste steam” that would direct (some!) of the smoke and heat towards the rear and eventually out of the tunnel, somehow.

I don’t know how many workers it took to operate this thing and make it all work, and I find it difficult to imagine working in a cramped, hot, loud, dangerous and uncertain situation as this, and have it all underground and powered by steam.

The only thing worse that I can think of–outside of pure disaster–is failure: what happened if the thing got “stuck”?
- “On each axle is a screw or worm wheel and there are two parallel shafts one on each side of the boiler with worms or screws thereon there being one worm for each of the wheels by this means a slow motion may be given to the wheels and the machinery may thus be moved towards the face of the work. The speed at which the screw shafts are driven is capable of being readily varied in order to suit the varying strata and in order to be able readily to adjust the progress of the machine to the quantity of work which the cutters are enabled …”–from the article.
[Source: The Engineer, volume 13, January 17, 1862, p 44.]

And by the way, the article identifies Mr. Penrice as being “of Wilton House, Norwich”, and so I looked that up:

Source: http://wiltontown.com/feature/wilton-house/
·Posted by :

JF Ptak

·in:

Industrial & Technological art — Technology, History of
Found Poetry of Fallacies (1864)

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

“Proposed Dictionary of Mechanical Fallacies”

“While Ignorant of Follies How Can We Become Wise?”

The author (“E”) writes to the readers of 1864 in The Journal of the Franklin Institute¹ an odd and open letter on truth, beauty, and the importance of recognizing fallacy. “E” has a bit of a hard time of it, writing more in the style of an early 19th-century figure than someone at mid-century, but sooner or letter he gets to his point, and along the way there are some pretty interesting observations. He also takes things a bit too far in places, but if you concentrate on his successes, the article is worth a read. It isn’t a suggestion of De Morgan’s A Budget of Paradoxes, but “E” provides enough in three pages to make it a good read.

In the spirit of poetic adventure I offer some of the “E” article below in situ as “Found Poetry of Fallacies”:

As a class to none is the caution, “Beware of Fallacies” more necessary than to inventors.

Of all men they ought to know that truth is only to be reached

through conflicts with error through that which steals on them in flattering guise and captivates them with plausible counterfeits.

It may seem strange that so many keen and shrewd inquires fall into mechanical sophistries

and what is worse fall in love with them but the illusions are too seductive to be resisted.

The fact is as true in physics as in morals:

“When fiction rises pleasing to the eye. Men will believe because they love the lie” (Witness those who yet befool themselves with Perpetual Motions the grossest of mechanical falsehoods.”

As this has been thought rather anomalous and outré a few more thoughts on it may not be deemed out of place.

The proposition is not so preposterous as it may seem nor is it so at all. The principle is universally recognized.

In all things we need to be shown the evil and the good.

To appreciate the one we must know something of the other.

While ignorant of follies how can we become wise.

Intelligence is a ceaseless struggle with error in social civil political philosophical mechanical and every other department of life…

The full article, via Google Books:

·Posted by :

JF Ptak

·in:

Technology, History of
The Human Trust Fund (1929)

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

No, not the work of George Costanza, but of someone else, a Chicago native who had an idea for saving the country, for saving humanity. I haven’t read but the first and last pages, and I think that that was about enough–I’m not at all sure what the author’s play was here, but whatever it was, he tried. In any event, this pamphlet (13″ x 8″ and 24 leaves) was printed in 1929–there’s no mention of The Depression that I could see (the epithet “Great” wouldn’t be applicable for another 15 months or so)–and once belonged to the great but problematic H.L. Mencken, who didn’t own it for long. This pamphlet is part of my Outsider Logic Collection, in the Department of Gallant Tries.

·Posted by :

JF Ptak

·in:

Absurdist, Unintentional
Stacked-Tech: Things on Top of Other Things (1926).

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

In just three or four decades into the skyscraper era and heavier-than-air powered flight there was a certain sense of planning to join those two technological (series of) achievements. This sense of enlightenment though didn’t seem very enlightened, or practical. The idea of locating airports on the tops of tall buildings, or on structures covering rivers (like the Hudson or Thames), or on long and wide structures built over expanses of shorter inner-city buildings, seem to have had a life from the late ‘teens into the 1940s. They were struggling ideas that struggled.

I found two more examples of this stuff-on-top-of-other-stuff tech thinking today. The first shows a structure 950′ tall made to accommodate a strained amount of air traffic in the heart of a large metropolitan center. (There are numerous examples of this idea sprinkled throughout this blog–just pop the word “airport” into the Google search box at upper right and you should find 10 or so posts on the topic, all with great illustrations.) By the way, this was one busy dream of an airport, what with 20 planes coming and going.

The second image is unusual but less-techy: a tennis court built on top of a reservoir:

I ‘m not sure how hurting people were for spaces for a tennis court in 1926, but the competition for the open land for such a thing couldn’t’ve been that severe.

·Posted by :

JF Ptak

·in:

Anticipation, History of — Architecture and Building