Author: JF Ptak

“Seven People to Make a Shadow”: Andersonville Prison, 1865

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1760

While reading about the story of Andersonville Prison I was much taken with a passage from the diary of Sgt. David Kennedy (of the 9th Ohio Cavalry), held at that prison, writing on 9 July 1864:

‘ Wuld that I was an artist & had the material to paint this camp & all its horrors or the tounge of some eloquent Statesman and had the privilege of expresing my mind to our hon. rulers at Washington, I should gloery to describe this hell on earth where it takes 7 of its occupants to make a shadow.’

Seven men to make one shadow. That does pretty much tell the story of Andersonville. It was known also as Camp Sumter, in Sumter County (Georgia), constructed and then opened in February 1864–quite late in the war–to hold 13,000 Union prisoners. That was a hoepful sentiment and held little planning, as the site held nearly 32,000 prisoners at one time, filled twice beyoind a capacity that even in the best conditions was too high. The prison was ill-conceived, not well made (except for the stockade fence constructed by slave laborers, which was pieced together so well that a person inside the stockade could not see anything whatsoever of the outside world through an imperfect join in the fence). So the view left to the prisoner was of other prisoners in fetid and deplorable states, lumber of the stockade, the poor Earth and disgusting mud of the central section of the stockade fed by a stream and turned into a disease-breeding swamp, and the sky.

The actual photograph (above) and the artist’s rendition, clarification, amplification, below:

[Source: Library of Congress. Andersonville prison, Georgia. Group of prisoners. ca. 1864-1865 “Drawing of prisoners among tents, showing starvation, crowding, poor clothing among prisoners.”
From “U. S. Navy. Edisto Island. Morris and Folly Islands. Fort Warren, Mass. Andersonville Prison, Miscellaneous.” photographic album, p 74 ([Andersonville Prison]).

Of the 45,000 Union soldiers held at the prison in its short life (February 1864-May 1865) nearly one-third of them died, most killed by ill-treatment, malnutrition, exposure, poor sanitary conditions, and starvation.

The map below gives a good view of the size of the swamp (“Whole Content of Stockade 25 1/2 acres, including swamp…”)

[Source: Robert Knox Sneden scrapbook (Mss5:7 Sn237:1), Virginia Historical Society. In the Robert Knox Sneden diary, 1861-1865 (v. 5, p. 606). 1 map : pen-and-ink and watercolor ; 18 x 14 cm.]

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Maps, Cartography, History of Mapmaking — Medicine, History of — Militaria
The Reverse of the Origin of Species and the American Civil War, 1862

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1759

This pungent bit appeared in Punch magazine 8 February 1862, and was a vicious attack against the Americans (almost entirely directed at the Union North) in the second year of the U.S. Civil War. What Mr. Punch saw in “his” editor’s mind was a “sinking” of the American race to the level of the “Red Indian”, the whole of the nation reverting to some previous developmental state, far removed by their actions to a more primitive people, a different sort of “evolution”–in fact, what the spoofing (?) and chiding editors saw in the Americans’ actions was a reverse of Darwin’s theory. These same people were already uncomfortable with Darwin (at this point three years past the publication of the Origin¹) but so long as using the book to a comfortable goal was concerned it seemed a perfect fit, a proof for the reverse of the Origin. As we see in the second short article:

“If there is any truth in the theory of the Origin of Species there may be an inversion of the originating process…”

Chief (and first) among the complaints was the blockade action against the Confederate port of Charleston (South Carolina). The “stone fleet” is incorrectly described in the wonderful “Science in 19th Century Periodicals” website as being of Confederate origin. The Stone Fleet was actually part of a Northern action, being a large contingent of ships brought south and sunk in the waters off Charleston Harbor in the hopes of preventing Confederate blockade runners from escaping the ring of Federal ships already present there. There were also a number of ships sunk off the coast of beautiful Tybee Island, there to be used as breakwaters and landings for Union ships operating just south of Savannah.

The behavior of the United States, so far as Mr. Punch was concerned, just wouldn’t “do”.

“SEVERAL scientific observers of late years have noticed the fact that the physiognomy of the American of the United States is beginning to exhibit a resemblance to that of the Red Indian.The barbarous act of sinking a stone fleet at the entrance of Charleston Harbour and the ferocity with which the permanent ruin of that port and city was anticipated by the Northern Press indicate an internal and moral change corresponding to that of the exterior Vindictive war is as characteristic as lankiness of features or a sallow complexion. It may be that when LORD MACAULAY’S New Zealander alter having visited London Bridge shall extend his peregrination to New York he will find the site of that once populous city to have reverted to hunting grounds their inhabitants hunting grounds their living in wigwams wearing top knots and mocassins and having their coloured faces tattooed. The representatives of the present Yankees will then be armed with tomahawks, rush to the tight with war whoop, scalp their enemies slain in battle, and torture their prisoners at the stake. Such is the level of humanity to which the people who have outraged civilisation by a crime against the commerce of the world are too evidently descending. Their posterity when about to go forth to battle will put on their war paint and even now perhaps the Government of MR. LINCOLN might supply a powerful stimulus to valour by issuing some pots of that ornamental material to the Federal army.”

Later in the year Mr. Punch again addressed “Brother Jonathan”, (a reference from Revoutinary War days to Americans in general, but more so during the Civil War, when “Brother Jonathan” and “Johnny” were both used…its also intersting to note the use of “Johnny Red” and also the appearance in “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”) and again invoked Mr Darwin and the Origin, and again using the “Indian type” as the state to which the “model Republic” was sending itself towards, with Americans “descending to the very lowest place”, an “inversion of the originating process”.

“Thus Jonathan you see you are sinking from bad to worse from savage to lower savage and your manifest destiny at that rate of decadence is the zero of humanity.”

It is a rather bad letter, brother-to-brother, so to speak., Mr. Punch claiming that Americans will descend to gorillas, “Apes with foreheads villainous low”. Surprisingly (to me, anyway) Mr. Punch slips easily into very vile characterizations of other types of human beings in use by metaphor–these don’t need to be singled out here but can be found in the original, below. And so the Manifest Destiny of American–“declared” or at least the phrase originated just 17 years earlier by John O’Sullivan in the Democratic Review in an article “Annexation” regarding Texas–so far as England was concerned was to be excruciatingly, intolerably, low; so low inn fact that it is the very proof of the stuff that the Origin of Species theory runs in reverse.

I’m not sure why the editorial cartoonist used the elephant in the hunt scene and how it relates to Mr. Darwin, though I guess it sends the overall message of The Ridiculous regarding the American affair, at least in the eyes of Punch–England still smarting from the Trent Affair, still newly developed.

Notes:

1. The title in full by C.R. Darwin, On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life, would stay so until it was shortened to The Origin of Species in its sixth edition of 1872. By the time these two articles in Punch appeared, the Origin already in its third edition (published in April 1861). In all of this, the enormously popular book was printed in not-large quantities. The first edition of November, 1859 sold out on the first day, and was printed in an edition of 1250 copies, of which about 1170 were for sale. Darwin was immediately put to work on a second edition (rather than simply reprint the first edition), and the work appeared two months later, in January 1860, in an edition of 3000 copies. The third edition appeared in April 1861 in an edition of 2000. The fourth edition appeared in 1866 (2000 copies); the fifth, in 1869 (2000 copies0, and the sixth and last in Darwin’s lifetime came out in 1872, in 3000 copies, the largest print run during CD’s lifetime. So, the most important book in the history of biology (?) sold a total of 13,170 copies or so as published in England by John Murray.

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Biology — Militaria — Naming Things
Humanitarian Propaganda II–POWs and the Hope for Those at Home, 1943/1944

JF Ptak Science Books Post 281 (from 2009) Extended [Part of the History of Nothing series.]

War propaganda is distributed across all levels of society during a time of conflict. I’ve made a number of posts concerning Nazi and Japanese propaganda but no so much on the Allies’ side. These pamphlets come from a small stash of mine relating to Red Cross activities and prisoners of war (POWs), and they fall chiefly I think in The History of Nothing series, mainly because of the chances that all of these packages wouldn’t stop and be used by German troops rather than going all the way through to POWs. The expectations of the Home Front concerning the disposition of their loved ones as prisoners of the Nazis were clearly illusory, what with steamed and pressed trousers and clean sharp shirts.

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History of Nothing — Militaria
Monopolis and Multiopolis: a Note on -apolises, -opolises, and Such

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1757

Welcome to Monopolis! “City of the future…imaginative immensity…disturbingly dynamic beauty…”

The moment I look at it Monopolis suggests another word: Multiopolis. Although the originators of the Mono- word weren’t really suggesting plain vanilla wrappings for a one-size-fits-all existence, the more diversified-sounding Multi- at least sounds a little more enchanting and not so Orwellian. It is also a little odd that I can find nothing on “Multiopolis”, not even in a popular Google search–and of course, having been printed in 1931, “Monopolis “can’t be “Orwellian” since Mr. Blair had not yet written any books, least of all 1984, which wouldn’t appear until the man was almost completely out of life. (Blair/Orwell wrote nine books in fifteen years, 1934-1949, and would die in January 1950.)

“Monopolis” certainly suggests a gritty sameness, a suffocating city of similarity with no central decency.

In this image (above), published in the Illustrated London News on 18 April 1931, Monopolis seems to live up to its promise in all aspects except for its name, which is actually pretty creative. The great building on the hill, the skyline in the mountain, all bauhaused-up with perhaps nowhere to go into the near-future, with really not that much, not too terribly much, to distinguish itself from a first-year architectural student’s semi-dreamed-upon work, though for some reason an aqueduct does makes an appearance to spice things up.

In the end, though, Monopolis was a simple title for a continuing series of new-house/design shows in London–it hasn’t much to do with anything, and was simply an interestingly-named bit for a bad advertising campaign.

I wonder about a collection of “Opoluses”, like the Christianopolis of the Lutheran Christian Utopia, published by Johann Valentin Andreae, in Reipublicae Christianopolitanae descriptio… published in Strasburg by the heirs of Lazarus Zetzner, 1619. This is certainly among the most elegant of things ending with “-opolis”, even though it does look like a prison. Or hospital. And no one would want to be in either in 1619.

[Source: Martayan Lan with thanks]

There is a small town in Kansas called Opolis, a place of 54 houses and 117 people or so. It sounds like a perfectly nice bookend to places like Indianapolis and Minneapolis (and yes they’re both “apolis” and not “opolis”), not to mention Hotdogopolis, Bike-opolis, Planned-opolis, and the fantastically-named Possible-opolis.

I think that Monopolis just won’t do.

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Architecture and Building — Naming Things
On Time’s Arrow and Change: the Death of Silent Movies

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1755

Few people who know about Tomas Kuhn would think that the true benefactor of the idea of the structure of scientific revolutions was Ms Midge Flep, seen here in a 1920 photograph next to her famous arrow. Ms. Flep, who always maintained that she was “never a head for schooling” did however think large thoughts, culminating evidently in her procedural banquet of what happens with change and time, and written famously of course on a series of large black paper and wooden arrows. “The nice thing about writing on wood” said Ms. Flep, “is that you can get your ideas down before the wood even gets turned into paper”. Her main and evidently much-copied thesis is that “big change like in big events are big”, and that “time will like an arrow will fly” somewhere, usually getting where it was going, “as arrows do, Mr. Zeno notwithstanding”.

This of course is not a true story, but it was the best I could do for this fantastic, high non sequitur found-photograph.

It does remind me of fast change, though–not in viewing the image exactly but in writing the nonsense about it.

Revolutions in science and in all sorts of other things does sometimes take sometime and great effort to find its way through the world. And sometimes, though not rarely, monumental changes in theory and technology and delivery systems find near-instantaneous reception, finding its universal spot very quickly. Ms. Flep-Bent’s arrow would have been deflected almost not-at-all in the case of the successful application of sound-on-film technology and its application in making movies–the effects of these changes were felt immediately at the Bijou, with a near-complete turnaround from one state of affairs to another (silent film and talkies) in only three years or so.

Look: people had been messing around with sound and cinema for decades, basically from the start of the mass exhibition of movies–results of these efforts up to the early 1920’s were poor. Enter the prolific and brilliant and problematic inventor and non-businessman Lee de Forest and the application of his audion in November 1922, when he established his De Forest Phonofilm Company at 314 East 48th Street in New York City. This was the true beginning and some very fierce and fast competition for sound-on-film motion pictures, which developed along the strengths of the RCA Photophone and Warner Bros Vitaphone, which basically left de Forest’s Phonofilm in the developing dust.

Fast forward through the technical part, sound-on-film motion pictures iconically took center stage with Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer on 16 October 1927. The movie went box office boffo, setting records all alog the way, and the studios began producing talkies at a prodigious rate–in the first two years after the Jolson film the only thing keeping the monumental change away from silent films was the rate of changeover in the theatres themselves as they upfitted to the new sound and projection systems. the result of all of this: 1927 was the absolute zenith for silent films; by 1930 Hollywood produced 335 sound films and 175 silent films; in the next year, 1931, only two silent films were made. The change was complete.

Sound changed everything, not the least of which were the careers of actors whose voices turned out to be unacceptable for whatever reason–nasal tons, high pitch, accents and so on doomed many a silent star. Also the idea of “acting” was tremendously affected–“overacting” gave way instantly to subtlety, now that actors no longer needed to act as though they were listening to something. Now they just did so, and the audience didn;t need the explanation, as they were experiencing the sound as well, right at the same time. But the big deal is that the fates changed dramatically for writers, who became important. Now that all sound was available and didn’t need to be described in pantomime or an occasional text card, the stuff of the script became extremely significant, especially the new thing: dialog.

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Technology, History of
French Humorous Menu Postcards

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

I’m not sure where the need came from for these turn-of-the-century French photographic postcards to exhibit a blank “menu” possibility to the recipient. Maybe it was a dinner invitation, or perhaps it was just a card poking fun at fun. I really don’t know–perhaps someone will be able to put one of these to use for their next dinner party?

All are from the charming Fantaisies Bergeret site, here.

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Absurdist, Unintentional
Digital “Computers” 1450-1750: Memory and Calculating on the Fingers and Hands

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1755

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 compartmented 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 o 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…”

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Calculating — mathematics, logic
The Dance of Work: Satires and Grotesques of the Professions, 1700.

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1754

Nicolas de Larmessin (1640-1725) was an enormously creative and productive artist, and in his way created a genre similar to the great and ancient Dance of Death/.Danse Macabre/Totentanz--though his was the Dance of Life. Or perhaps it was something less political and philosophical, simply showing itself as a Dance of Work, A Satire of Occupation. (In the earlier, 14 & 15th century printed version of the Dance of Death, which shows death coming to people of different professions, that the earliest meetings between death and its intended depict death done only in bones, and is relatively scary; later on, moving into the 17 and 18th centuries, death occasionally wears some elements of the profession of the person whom he seeks, giving the expedition a little share of irony or dark comedic relief. In general, though I find the Wolgement, Holbein, Durer varieties of death-hungry Death to be fairly well off-putting; those later on less so.)

About 100 of these images from de Larmessin were published over a period of time and in variously-titled works, appearing as Les costumes grotesques et les métiers, and Costumes grotesques and Habits des métiers et professions–maybe they were more grotesques than anything else, or satires. Nicolas was part of a long family history of the de Larmessin (also L’Armessin) family, a famous series of generational engravers and printers, who worked and functioned in the 17th and 18th centuries.

To me the devil of his work is in fact in the details, and their accumulations. There very well may be a lot to study in the minutiae of what each profession has hanging to the ends of their clothing–or at least it seems possible that some previously overlooked widget gets a little public airing in one of these images…

Some of the alphabet of professions treated by de Larmessin include: Baker, (Boulanger), Basket maker (Vannier), Blacksmith (Ma Brick Mason (Masson), Butcher (Boucher), Chef (Cuisinier), Chest and Box maker (Malletier-Coffretier), Clock maker (Corlogeur), Clothes seller (Fripier), Coffee merchant (Caffetier), Comb and brush seller (Peigné), Comedian (Comédien), Dairy & cheese maker (Laitier), Farm laborer (Labourer), Fisherman (Pescheur), Furier (Foureur), Gardener (Jardinier), Hat maker (Chapellier), Hosier (Bonnetier), Knife and Sissor Sharpener (Remouleur), Locksmith (Serrurier), Leather worker (Ceinturier), Miller (Meusnier), Money changer (Monnoyer), Maker of table games (Tabletier), Perfume maker/seller (Parfumeur), Playing Card printer (Cartier), Plume and feather seller (Plumassier), Plumber (Plombier), Printer (Imprimeur), reschal), Saddle maker (Sellier), Second-hand Shoe maker (Sauetier), Tailor (Tailleur), Wheel wright (Charron), Wild Game chef/seller (Rotisseur), Wild Game chef/seller (Rotisseur),Wine merchant (Cabaretier), Wine maker (Vigneron).

Source for all following images: Live Journal

But before proceeding any further, I must at least make reference to another master in this field, an earlier, perhaps revolutionary figure, Arcimboldo (1527-1593), who produced royal portraits composed entirely of fruits and vegetables, as so:

The people and professions portrayed by de Larmessin are “people” underneath it all; with Arcimboldo its fruit and veggies all the way down, just like with the Dance of Death, there’s nothing beyond the bone but disappeared bone.

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Alphabets — Art History
A Temple of Bricks: London, 1872

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

There is almost nothing in this image except for bricks–a few people are in their tiny gardens, and there’s a tiny bit of sky visible just above the train on the railway bridge. But the medium of the image is brick. And smoke, and soot. Sooty red bricks rendered in black-and-white in this homage to the working classes of London, a temple of bricks for the second-generation members and cogs of the industrial revolution, packed together in a neat and orderly and tight way. By this point, in 1872, there were strong differentiations between the lower middle class and the working poor, and these people below–with their own houses and yards–are the lower middle class and the very backbone of the British Empire.

This is the work of Gustave Dore from 1872, “Over London by Rail”, as it appeared in Blanchard Jerrold’s London, a Pilgrimage (1872). It seems that in this collaborative expedition into the city of London that the Frenchman-_Dore–gives us the best view of what life was like then. The pair set out to document, to record, to observe–Blanchard provides the text, and he does a very good job at seeing and responding to it,m doing so with almost no interior thoughts about causes or reasons. Dore responds with pictures, and for the most part is a devastating chronicler.

Some of the 180 illustrations can be seen here.

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Architecture and Building — Art History
The Atomic Crossbow of Leonardo da Vinci

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1753

Leonardo understood “big”, especially when it came to weapons, and he understood what the concept of ‘big” meant to adversaries and enemies of the folks with the “big” weapon—a bit of psych-ops in the mid-Renaissance by the High Renaissance man.

Leonardo’s crossbow (drawn around 1486) should have worked. He certainly understood the idea of stored power in his many drawings–bent and twisted and torqued wooden arms and such–and the concepts of enormous potential is certainly reeking through-and-through this fantastic weapon. The bow itself seems certainly like a laminated object, adding to its strength via flexibility, the giant bow-string drawn back by a very considerable worm and gear, the whole of which is set to give flight to a large stone more so than an arrow. And that stone was supposed to be able to be delivered to its target over and over again, with minor adjustments, which would have placed it head-and shoulders above cannons, whose recoil made it really quit impossible to re-aim the instrument with any accuracy at the same target over and over again. The main compliment of the crossbow, then, was reproducible accuracies. (In this vein it is interesting to recall “Operation Crossbow”, a Combined Bombing Operations during WWII that took place in 1943 and 1944 against the Nazi installations for the V-2 and V-3 weapons–a directed effort to remove a threat which was even more “precise” (if by “precision” we mean marginally guided weapons loaded with high explosives).)

The “atomic” part of the title of this post is I know far from the mark of being metaphorically correct–the scale isn’t anywhere near being accurate. Offhand to have an “atomic” crossbow in relation to a nominally normal crossbow in similar scale of the Fat Man weapon in scale with an “average” 500-pound bomb (40 million pounds in relation to 500 pounds) the atomic crossbow would need to be miles wide.

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Circles, Geometry — History of the Future — Inventions — Militaria

Author: JF Ptak

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1755