Author: JF Ptak

When 2-D LOVE is 3-D LUST: Picturing another Spatial Dimension is Easier if you are Homer Simpson

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1502

A note dragging together–against their will–the movie Hypercube, Homer Simpson, Marcel Duchamp, Jimmy Neutron, Emile Jouffret, Filippo Marinetti, Paolo Uccello and Edwin Abbott. Warning: this might not work.

We saw a movie the other night, Cube 2, Hypercube, which I think is meant to be Cube², but I honestly think that the title didn’t appear that way because not that many people (?!) would know how to “pronounce” the little superscript floaty “2”. The movie was pretty interesting, telling the story of a group of people “imprisoned” in a large, sterile cube with a door on each face that opened into an identical cube, and on and on into a Borgesian infinity-hell. At one point the people are theorizing on the nature of the Cube, winding up with someone saying that they might all be in a fourth spatial dimension.

It brings up a pretty well-worn thought about visualizing a different dimension, and then it occurred to me that the only general-population folks who seemed to be most at ease with this idea were cartoon characters: and since I am a father of children, a Father of Children, I am very well familiar with recent cartoon history. Homer Simpson, for example, slips from his two-dimensional world into what was supposed to a three dimensional world, and he seems perfectly comfortable. (The equation in the background, 1782^12 + 1841^12 = 1922 ^12 is correct for the first nine digits, but not for the last thirty. Plus, since the product of odds is odd, and the product of evens are even, the sum of even and odds is odd, so the answer must be wrong. But close. And really, really good for little Homer.) Timmy Turner (Fairly Oddparents) and Jimmy Neutron (of the show bearing his name) switch worlds,one going 2-to-3 D and the other the other way ’round, with both being perfectly comfortable in their new space.

Of course the issue of imagining a three-dimensional shape in a two-dimensional world is pretty knotty if you are not having a cartoonist draw out your brain’s interpretations of the world. The great classic of this is Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, an 1884 book about a two dimensional world of shapes that encounters a dot that grew concentrically and outwardly, a dot expanding and then contracting itself in a series of circles, morphing until it appeared as a new and revolutionary form rising from the plane of Flatland, evolving into a new thing, a Sphere. The folks in Flatland had a hard time with it.

Depicting a third dimension in a two-dimensional space is tough, the whole deal being rediscovered in perspective only relatively recently in the history of human thought, being only about 600+ years old. (In quasi order perspective is brought to the West by Cimabue, the Isaac Master, Giotto, Duccio, Maso, Avanzo, Lorenzetti, Donatello, Ghiberti, Fra Angelico, and so on, not the least of whom would include our beautiful Paolo Uccello.) Giving real “flavor” to the extra dimension was still quite difficult, even in the 19th century. In the “Spirit of Discovery” section of the British weekly magazine The Mirrour of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction for 22 October 1836 there is a short notice on the “physiognotype”, “a machine for taking casts, lately invented by a gentleman in Paris”. We’re accustomed to these devices now as they’ve been for sale in toy shops for decades—but in 1836 it was a real breakthrough for making instantaneous three-dimensional models of small things. In 1836 there really wasn’t any simple way of producing a direct, proportional model like this in 3-D except for encasing it in plaster and then casting from that mold. Two-dimensional modeling was easier, and there were numerous devices constructed for this purpose as people pursued the still-hot rage of physiognomic forecasting, with simpler means (like shadow portraits) being hundreds of years earlier. (Photography remember is still three years away from being announced and another few years from being sort of accessible to middle-class folks.)

Imaging the fourth dimension was more a product of mathematics than of art, with people like Emile Jouffret¹ getting to it a little before Marinetti and Duchamp and the squirrely Picasso did. (Thinking on the fourth dimension goes back as far as Kant, at least, and the real work begins in the first half of the 19th century².)

But it seems as though the cartoon (like Homer, above) and comic book characters have a much easier time with this added-dimension issue, using it to full advantage without muss or fuss, and certainly without any philosophical commentary. Their reach across the aisles of the 1952 Rexalls and other general merchandise emporia with enough floor space for a revolving magazine stand was straight into the heart of the common reader, filling them with the hope/fear of their two-dimensional explorations into what they called their 3-D 3D 3.D Three Dee world, selling “closer-to-life stories in closer-to-life 3rd Dimension”.

It seems that the same might be true for 3-D movies as well, the characters busting out into a new dimension (sometime fully aware of it) without a care or riddle, the main effect of finding the new spatial dimension sitting squarely in the minds of the observers, who are already in that dimension and reacting to somethingf with a surprising surprise of seeing a familiar thing in its proper context.

I’d love to know what that fourth spatial dimension looks like, as promised by The Starlets…or maybe not.

Notes:

1. Jouffret, E. Traite Elementaire de Geometrie a Quartre Dimensions et Introduction a la Geometrie a n-Dimensions. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1903. 1st edition. ! 215pp. and Jouffret. Melanges de Geometrie a Quatre Dimensions. 220pp. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1906. 1st edition. (Perhaps one of the most classic works of the late 19th and early 20th c on imaging the fourth dimension–certainly well known to the Cubists and Futurists, I’m certain that it sparked any number of ideas in the art world.)

2. The first major work arrives with Hermann Grassmann’s “Die Lineale Ausdehnungdlehre” (Theory of Linear Extensions) in 1844 (and the subsequent translations of the work as well as original work by Arthur Cayley); followed by Ludwig Shclafli (1814-1895) “Theorie der vier flachen….” (Theory of Continuous Manifolds, 1852 but not published until 1906), Riemann’s 1854 speech (which was not published until 1867 and which appeared translated by William Kingdom Clifford in Nature in 1873, G.F. Rodwells “On Space of Four Dimensions” (Nature, May 1873), Dodgson/Carroll‘s Through the Looking Glass (1872) deep references, Zollner “On Space of Four Dimensions”

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Information, Quantitative Display of — Naming Things — Perception — Perspective
Disturbing and Disturbed Obstetrical Devices: Straps, Belts and Iron Bits

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1501

Where does a device like the one, below, belong, exactly? Where in the long rolls of intellectual history should it be found?

E.A. Agerton is actually Ella C. Agerton–it was easy for me to assume that the person Agerton was a man, because to my experience when I find such devices in the patent office archives they are usually made by men. What Ms. Agerton was attempting with this device is something I don’t understand, though she does make the following statement in her Patent Office record:

Here’s another, earlier version of this beast, displayed in practical use. I have to say that the drawing of the woman’s face is deeply disturbed:

I’ve also found quite by chance that the drawings of the faces of the women drawn as “patients” of these devices can be very unsettling, hardly faces at all, even though the representation of the rest of the body is functional. For example, the face of the woman below looks as though it is part of the furniture/device:

The drawings of faces can be so bad that I wonder if anyone can actually be that bad of an artist without trying to be.

None if this even reads comfortably; I don’t know what it would have been like to been trussed up in such a thing.

This leads to another uncomfortable image. At first glance I thought it was part of a delivery procedure, but it turns out that this was the rigging for a woman undergoing a gynecological examination. The woodcut appears in the first volume of Sammelband von 7 Kleinschriften zu gynakologischen Spezialthemen, 1858-1901, and more exactly in the contribution by Ludwig Neugebauer on an examination with a “speculum bivale l’ecarteur vaginal a trios branches…” published in 1884. I know that the prissy prejudices brought about with the coming of Queen Victoria in 1837 still had another 17 years to go at this point, which could explain why, perhaps, a doctor would want an aid in helping a woman maintain an examination position without him having to touch his patient, but, well, just look at the massiveness of the restraints! Also, the woman’s arms are *inside* the ropes—not down, not holding the ropes, but inside the binding, restrained. Either way, it isn’t good, treating the woman—in either case of pregnancy or obstetric examination—as the inferior vessel.

This is also part of a long history of the subjugation of women—the medical aspects of that indoctrination were perhaps somewhat more heinous than the social/legal/ethical/pedagogical/moral constituents. This illustration, even coming at the end of the Victorian era and approaching the dawn of encroaching bits of equality for (white) women, is a fair example of their subordinate status.

I just happened upon this picture during the course of my business day—a random image compiling these thoughts. If I were to try and choose another example of the medical aspect of the subjugation of woman I think that I would choose the story of the Chamberlen family. For several generations, beginning around 1680, this family of medical doctors practiced a secret—their secret—in delivering breeched babies. Breeched babies are those who were born feet first, which was usually a death sentence for both the child and the mother. Patriarch William Chamberlen invented a device that would greatly aid in delivering babies in this position—the forceps. And even though everyone today knows what these things are, the Chamberlens kept them a secret from the inquisitive medical world for more than a century. Their instrument was shrouded—literally!—in secret(s), used under cover, with ceremony, conveyed to the delivery area in a box and brought out with no witnesses. The Chamberlens felt their invention to be their own, for their own particular use and monetary gain, and the rest of the world be damned, and at least three generations (grandfather, father, son) kept the family secret. If their family could not be in charge of such a delivery then there would be no use of their extraordinary invention. This of course would save their income from being chipped away by other physicians or midwives or whatever competent person could be found to utilize the forceps—their economic gain coming at the cost of (savable but imperiled) pregnant women who would either pay the Chamberlens for aid in their breeched births or, well, probably die. To what degree this revolting behavior damaged other people can not be calculated. I’m not even sure about how to translate this into something more recognizable—would it be like Robert Koch keeping his isolation of Bacillus anthracis (1877), or tuberculosis bacillus (1882) a secret? Or Wilhelm Roentgen shrouding his discovery in secrecy somehow? (I know, I know, this is impossible.) Or isolating a secret, proprietary cure for cancer?

There is a large part of me that believes that if the Chamerlens had figured out something like this that affected only men, a silver bullet for something or other, that their secret wouldn’t stayed a secret for 100 hours, let alone 100 years.

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Bad Ideas — Medicine, History of — Technology, History of — Women, History of
Electro-IronPunk Centrifugal Birthing Machine–a Fantastically Bad Idea

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1500

I found this by accident, and needed to share it immediately, because in the splendid and chilly vastness of the infinite Encyclopedia of Bad Ideas, this entry would seem quite the poster child for such a stupendous effort–the mud to which all dust aspires.

The centrifugal machine for human birth…its hard to even finish that sentence, let alone finish it without wincing. What could possibly go wrong, or right, with spinning a pregnant woman strapped like Hannibal Lechter on a spinning turntable?

I think what we have here is the Vitruvian Woman of Bad Ideas relating to human birth, the patent described more fully in this great piece by Marc Abrahams (of the Annals of Improbable Research) in The Guardian, 2006). And how could the symbology of the thing get any weirder? It looks like this poor woman has her head resting on a stretched piece of animal skin, all of which is located on a cross–but since there is a person on it the medical device become a crucifix. And let’s not forget the counterweights on either side of the governor, which in detail below are suspend to either side of the woman’s head; and also the baby sack, for, well, catching the baby…

Image source: Google Patents

And the excruciating, inexorable detail:

In their patent application, Blonsky and Blonsky explained the grievous and imaginary need:

“In the case of a woman who has a fully developed muscular system and has had ample physical exertion all through the pregnancy, as is common with all more primitive peoples, nature provides all the necessary equipment and power to have a normal and quick delivery. This is not the case, however, with more civilised women, who often do not have the opportunity to develop the muscles needed in confinement.”–from the Blonsky patent.

“Therefore, wrote Blonsky and Blonsky, they would provide “an apparatus which will assist the under-equipped woman by creating a gentle, evenly distributed, properly directed, precision-controlled force, that acts in unison with and supplements her own efforts”.–Marc Abrahams, quoting the Blonsky patent in The Guardian (referenced above).

The text of the patent report, below, in full:

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The 47 Sins of Isaac Newton, as Recorded by Himself

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1498

“Nabed Efyhik
Wfnzo Cpmfke’”–Issac Newton, ca. 1660

So begins this extraordinary work known as the Fitzwilliam Manuscript¹: Isaac Newton’s name, plus for words on two lines, which the Newton scholars suspect to be a key to a cipher. It was purchased at a Sotheby auction by Maggs Brothers in 1936 for £180, and within the month found itself in the Fitzwilliam Museum. What makes it fantastic–aside from having some mathematical/physical work by Sir Isaac in its 5,000 or so words–is the almost impossible inclusion of a list of what Newton could remember of the sins that he had committed. He finds 47 transgressions within his memory.

It seems to me that listing the sins of people is nearly as old as writing, since the absolutely overwhelming aspect of that practice is describing sin in general or, of course, the sin of others. Or the judicial end, the sins of people have been listed and judged many millions of times for billions (or whatever) of offenses. And certainly the listing or provocation or announcement of sin has been endless fodder for entertainment in the forms of story telling, theatre, novels, and so on. Then, too, there’s all of the religious indictment and beseeching for proclaiming sins for atonement. On the individual level for a living human, a famous person, it is extremely uncommon to find a highly personal listing like this, even whispered as they were into a notebook, Sir Isaac I am sure thinking as though this was almost as good as writing the sins in dust. I wonder how he would feel, seeing people discussing them, like this?

This transcribed list comes from the fantastic Newton Project,² site.

Newton (1642-1727) writing in about 1662 (and about 20 years old), and who was at Cambridge for a few years already, just prior to what was perhaps his most astonishing period of creativity, (and with the time of the Plague, just a few years in the future):

“Before Whitsunday 1662.

“[Note: Whitsunday, the Sunday of the feast of Whitsun (or “White Sunday”) or Pentecost int he Christian liturgical year, celebrated/observed seven weeks past Easter, the celebration too of summer, and the descent of the Holy Spirit on Christ’s disciples (Acts of the Apostles chap 2.) ALSO Newton at this point is 20 years old.]

Vsing the word (God) openly
Eating an apple at Thy house
Making a feather while on Thy day
Denying that I made it.
Making a mousetrap on Thy day
Contriving of the chimes on Thy day
Squirting water on Thy day
Making pies on Sunday night
Swimming in a kimnel on Thy day
Putting a pin in Iohn Keys hat on Thy day to pick him.
Carelessly hearing and committing many sermons
Refusing to go to the close at my mothers command.
Threatning my father and mother Smith to burne them and the house over them
Wishing death and hoping it to some
Striking many
Having uncleane thoughts words and actions and dreamese.
Stealing cherry cobs from Eduard Storer
Denying that I did so
Denying a crossbow to my mother and grandmother though I knew of it
Setting my heart on money learning pleasure more than Thee
A relapse
A relapse
A breaking again of my covenant renued in the Lords Supper.
Punching my sister
Robbing my mothers box of plums and sugar
Calling Dorothy Rose a jade
Glutiny in my sickness.
Peevishness with my mother.
With my sister.
Falling out with the servants
Divers commissions of alle my duties
Idle discourse on Thy day and at other times
Not turning nearer to Thee for my affections
Not living according to my belief
Not loving Thee for Thy self.
Not loving Thee for Thy goodness to us
Not desiring Thy ordinances
Not long {longing} for Thee in {illeg}
Fearing man above Thee
Vsing unlawful means to bring us out of distresses
Caring for worldly things more than God
Not craving a blessing from God on our honest endeavors.
Missing chapel.
Beating Arthur Storer.
Peevishness at Master Clarks for a piece of bread and butter.
Striving to cheat with a brass halfe crowne.
Twisting a cord on Sunday morning
Reading the history of the Christian champions on Sunday

Since Whitsunday 1662

Glutony
Glutony
Vsing Wilfords towel to spare my own
Negligence at the chapel.
Sermons at Saint Marys (4)
Lying about a louse
Denying my chamberfellow of the knowledge of him that took him for a sot.
Neglecting to pray 3
Helping Pettit to make his water watch at 12 of the clock on Saturday night

Notes:

1. From the website of the Newton Project (described following): “Miscellaneous notebook containing Newton’s accounts for 1665-9, a series of increasingly complicated mathematical problems, and a highly revealing personal confession. At Whitsun 1662, Newton compiled a list of all the 47 sins he could remember having committed in his life, from stealing cherries to “threatning my [step]father and mother … to burne them and the house over them”. The accounts section charts the beginning of his study of alchemy in 1669, with purchases of books, materials and a furnace to equip the makeshift laboratory he set up in the grounds of Trinity College.”

2. The Newton Project is the work of Professor Rob Iliffe (Director, AHRC Newton Papers Project) and Scott Mandelbrote (Fellow & Perne librarian, Peterhouse, Cambridge).

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A Backwards, Inside-Out, Oil + Iron Internet (1937)

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

I feel slightly queasy seeing this photograph, found in the August 1937 issue of Popular Science magazine–-it seems to me to be a backwards, inside-out analog cyberpunk (without the cyber) variety of the internet, a robotic device moving people around from data bit to data bit, an oil and iron process of automatic info retrieval, moving the user to the information rather than the other way around. The image does put me in mind of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, which renders info and other muck in a high-dystopian fashion with endless ducts and file cabinets, making things oppressively inaccessible in their accessibility.

And to some degree there’s a little Spongebob similarity in there too, though without the iron nd metal part, just Mr. Squarepants and his cardboard filing cabinets for all of this thoughts and memories, serviced by smaller units of himself whop presumably have their own filing systems in their heads. Filing cabinets, all the way down.

There is a more-refined image of what is basically the same idea, found here in the fantastic bio-art of Fritz Kahn (1888-1968), who published his Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as an Industrial Palace or thereabouts) in Stuttgart in 1926. Kahn is seen as a “modernist”, which I guess is true; to me he is far more than that–he’s “different”.

In Charlie Chaplin’s great 1937 Modern Times, there are no file cabinets and I don’t think that there’s any paper, just the results of vast mechanization:

And of course, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, made a little earlier, in 1927:

And finally, an image of the semi-reverse of the gigantic filing system: moving humans through mounds of paper not contained in file cabinets, stacked upon stacks of stacks. Once everything is said and done, none of this info-sausage-factory seems very pretty.

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Atom Bombs: the Game.

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1497

I do not know the precise date when displaying the death of children was used to sell detergent. There were deep hints of a child’s death in a Twilight Zone episode (selling Borax) in the ate 1950’s, but in general I think that killing kids on television for story development and entertainment is more an ’80’s creation than anything else. Children dying in stories on television had been verbotten, a non-starter, for decades; now kids die in Dr. House’s hands and all over the rest of that wasteland place and there’s barely a wrinkle in the entertainment continuum.

Killing children in literature is entirely different, and of course much older. Given the overwhelmingly and horrible basis of the news reports of the Old Testament, I wonder what the great flood would’ve looked like on OT TV? After all, it was reported that the creator did away with almost everything on Earth–men, women, and of course every child and baby on the planet, drowned like rats in a bag, but without a bag–kids left to float away from their parents, and then drown, sinking into the cold black sea created by the very thing that created them.

Kids killing things in play is another matter, especially since it is done so for fun. I guess they smote or smitted things for time immemorial, but it wasn’t until very recently, and mostly with the invention of the middle class and the creation of disposable income, that killing toys were sold to kids in stores. Toy guns and knives and other implements of destruction at least made whatever the kids were doing a face-to-face activity. When the atomic bomb toys started to appear in the late ’40’s, killing stuff took on the potential of worldwide destruction. Of course I doubt that any kid playing with these atom bomb toys had an inkling of what it meant to use the weapon in the real world, but the appearance of atomic bomb toys–while not quite yet at the level of Auschwitz board games–is on the revolting side. On the other hand the destruction of entire galaxies has been witnessed by kids in any number of movies and television programs, what with billions of living being killed in the process.

I don’t know what the effect is of exposing children to mass killings in the name of grand theft auto, let alone opening apocalyptic floodgates by putting nuclear weapons within their reach. It just isn’t right.

Does these things, below, seem appropriate to you? Take for example a simple matter in this detail from a U.S. Patent Office report for game pieces for a board game–the pieces were described; the game wasn’t. The inventor, Verne Sellers, provided tanks, artillery, an air power of some sort, a “shield”, a general, a few undesignated items, and of course an atom bomb. The atom bomb would make things all right.

[Source: atomic bomb game pieces from US Patent and Trademark Office via Google Patents: http://www.google.com/patents/USD172810?dq=atom+bomb+game]

And then there is the “Safe, Harmless, Giant Atomic Bomb”, which is something that is made to sound so much like nothing that it gives “nothing” a new meaning.

[Source: Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/electrichermit/atomic-age-america/]

Then this lovely thing, a small and cheap dexterity toy that places atomic destruction in the sphere of a semi-mindless time-killing toy, a real neutralizer to the significance of the thing it portrays:

I can’t imagine many people wouldn’t feel some sort of sympathy for this gigantic King Kong, who looks up just in time to see the massive nuke falling on his head, personalizing the delivery system of mass destruction:

Total destruction as a game, or game piece; an oxymoronic trivial pursuit.

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Questionable Quidity: the Preservation of Decay–Atomic Bomb Suits

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1486

Part of this blog’s long series on Atomic and Nuclear Weapons

Is there anything more revolting than this solitary, encapsulated, iron maidenesque survival sarcophagus and its promised hope of survivability?

Perhaps not. This patent application for an individual survival suit from 1958 gives us something to think about, perhaps gives us the cause to imagine what the world would look like from the inside of that portable evacuation chamber (that had its own attache case for storage).

Another variant, from 1958, shows a handy, mobile triangular leaf-incinerator-like environment that you wheel into position, put on its side, and then crawl into and die:

The bomb(s) would go off, and there you would be, standing with your back against the wall, or laying in the gutter pressed against the curb, just another piece of the dead city, another piece of metal waiting to decay. I’m not sure what is going on in this scene, which while being crude is still steeped in a high-creep factor. I get the impression of slow time in these images, as though the atom-bomb-suited people have been there for a long time, though I suspect that we are seeing an urban area just after a blast. It is a wincingly bad scene.

(Why is it that when seeing Civil Defense films and etc from this period we see people ducking-and-covering from one bomb? Since the great majority of Americans lived in one of the 75 “essential delivery acquisitions” areas (I forget now the source for this phrase) it was exceptionally unlikely that people would be dealing with a single acquisitions implement, since the Soviet stockpile of nuclear weapons would’ve been at probably half-par with the U.S., which at this point (1958 or so) would be around 18,000.)

Here’s another example of some unusual thinking on surviving nuclear holocaust, 1958, only these–while solitary–are not terribly mobile, even if they did come with wheels. (Didn’t it bother anyone that something that was supposed to prevent you from flying glass and bricks and the terrestrial ring of fire could be moved around on such tiny wheels?) They look more like waste receptacles. Maybe that’s what they would wind up being, if they were ever used for their intended purpose.

[Source: Google patents, http://www.google.com/patents/US2827004]

And another atomic bomb “garment-like” thing–this looks like it might actually be useful on airplanes, because most people who die in crashes do so from smoke inhalation…but providing one of these per person would be a bad flying vibe, just like seat belts (so ferociously resisted by Mr. Iacocca) were seen by the car industry as an unnecessary reminder of how dangerous cars were/are).

[Source: Google patents, http://www.google.com/patents/US2827004]

Anyway, the only way these things might be useful in times of such an emergency as atomic holocaust would be as a burial shroud. And since a bunch of people would (presumably) already be wearing them at the time of attack, the job of burying them would be that much less work, since they were already shrouded. Of course, that’s assuming (a) that people would or could be buried, and (b) that there was anyone left to do the burying.

[Source: Google Patents, http://www.google.com/patents/US2683876]

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Questionable Quidity: Fireworks Boxing

JF Ptak Science Books Quick QUIDITY Post

Certainly in the history of creative chemistry there were more reasonable things to do than this. But perhaps not, perhaps the folks in 1934 had come to the realization that the idea of creativity was spent, that there were not going to be any new, good ideas, that the era of reasoned inquiry was gone–and to celebrate, the sport of fire boxing was born.

These realizations came in 1934, and 1935, and every year, before and since. The struggle with or for creativity and genius is a second-by-second bout, and there is no doubt that the quidity of what passes for a “good idea” for x^x ideas must surely fill the middle of the infinite Encyclopedia of Stuff that Doesn’t Make Sense.

My guess is that the number of bad ideas stays a relative constant among humans. The only difference over time is the number of humans having the bad ideas and the ways in which everyone hears about them.

Note:

The guy on the left bears a small resemblance to Augustus Saint-Gauden’s Adams Memorial (sometimes called “Grief”).

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Precursor to Zombie-Phone-to-Deadsville: the Telephone Medical Metal Detector “X-Ray”

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1495

Did President Garfield Die Because of Metal Bed Springs?

Thomas Edison famously took advantage of a naive reporter, telling the young man that he was working on an invention that would allow a person to telephone dead people–a story that was reported as true, and one which Edison (both thoroughly disgusted and joyful) helped to perpetuate to the day he died by simply not discussing the issue. (This story appears on this blog here.)

Much earlier, only five years after Alexander Graham Bell first patented and published his invention of the telephone, the device was used by Bell to do some very early electrical medical imaging. The new President of the United States, James Garfield, had been shot by Charles Guiteau in Baltimore and Potomac Railway Station (on 2 July, 1881, after a lengthy period of semi-abstract stalking and planning) Station in Washington, D.C., receiving fatal wounds in July and which would cause his death later in September. The problem was that at this point in the history of surgery it was difficult to locate bullets in the body, becoming more so if the bullet took a non-straight course through the wounded. Normally, in 1881, a doctor could for example use a device called a Nelaton probe, a thin porcelain device (as opposed to most other probes, which were metallic) to help locate the embedded bullet. But given the nature of Garfield’s wounds, this was just not applicable, and the bullet escaped recognition from this and other probes.

Bell enters the scene with an electromagnetic invention, the induction balance, which he created to detect interference on a telephone line. In the process of experimentation Bell recognized that the balance could be disturbed if the metal and battery-fueled probe came into contact with a piece of metal.–basically, the device was a medical metal detector. Bell resolved to use the device on Garfield, passing the probe along the President’s body while another person listened to a telephone ear piece for the telltale “click” of a proximate metallic object.

Bell was not successful with this, or at least not so at this time, and the President died, succumbing to an infection, finally. But Bell was able to perfect this instrument, something that stayed in use as the principal means of detecting metal objects in the body, and was about as fine an instrument as could be expected, though it was completely eclipsed by the revolutionary machines brought about by Wilhelm Roentgen’s discovery of X-Rays in 1895. And as it just so happens, the first surgical case in which the x-rays were used was for a case involving a shotgun wound.

Finally, one of the reasons why Bell’s instrument didn’t quite work on President Garfield is that Garfield’s bed had a metal box spring, which very well might have played havoc with Bell’s instrument. Perhaps if there was no metal in examining area, Bell’s device might’ve worked.

Notes:

An earlier and more crude device had been invented by Wilhelm Heinrich Dove (1803-1879, a German physicist and early meteorologist) though I am not sure that it comes into play with Bell’s apparatus at all.

From Harper’s Weekly, 13 August 1881:

“The experiments made by Professor Alexander Graham Bell with the view of determining by the aid of the electric current the location of the bullet in the President’s person were of the most interesting nature. The possibility that a time might come when it would be necessary to make incisions at once for the removal of the bullet, without consuming precious time for further consultation, gave to the experiments an importance which added greatly to their interests.”

“An apparatus known as the induction balance had been used by Professor Bell in analyzing metals. This instrument, modified so as to impart to it the highest degree of sensitiveness, was used in the search for the leaden ball. Its nature is such that it is not easily understood except by electricians. It consists of a battery, two coils of insulated wire, a circuit-breaker, and a telephone. The ends of the primary coil are connected with a battery, and those of the secondary coil are fastened to the posts of the telephone. This latter connection renders audible any faint sound produced by the circuit-breaker, or any change in the pitch of that sound. The coils may be so placed in their relationship to each other that no sound is made by the circuit-breaker. They are then said to be balanced, and the wires are extremely sensitive to the disturbing presence of any other piece of metal. A bullet like that with which the President was shot, before it was flattened, will, when placed within two and one-half inches of the most sensitive point on the pair of coils, cause a faint protest against the disturbance to arise in the telephone. A flattened bullet of the same bulk, when presented with its flat surface toward the coils, will make its presence felt at a distance of nearly five inches. When its sharp edge is turned toward the plane of the coils, no sound is produced beyond the distance of one inch.”

“With these facts in view, the experiments to locate the position of the bullet in the President’s body were begun. The patient was bolstered up in bed, and he watched the proceedings with mute interest. His physicians stood around. Professor Bell stood with his back toward the President, holding the telephone to his ear, while Mr. Tainton, Professor Bell’s assistant, moved the coils over that portion of the abdomen where the leaden ball was thought to be imbedded. When the sensitive centre of the instrument was immediately over the black and blue spot that appeared shortly after the President was wounded, Professor Bell said, “Stop! there it is.”

“The experiment was repeated several times — once with Mrs. Garfield listening at the telephone; and she told the President when the coils had been brought to the spot where the presence of the bullet had previously caused the delicate instrument to give forth a singing sound. From these tests it was inferred that in any event the bullet was less than five inches from the surface, and that if it was only slightly flattened, or if its edge was turned obliquely toward the surface, it might be much nearer to the skin. The conclusion reached was that if it should become necessary to remove the bullet at any time, this might be speedily accomplished by two quick cuts with the surgeon’s lancet.”

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JF Ptak

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Industrial & Technological art — Medicine, History of — Technology, History of
Searching for Structure: Triangles and Trees

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1494

It was this lovely engraving from Richard Bradley’s A General Treatise of Husbandry and Gardening..., printed in London in 1721/2, that brought up the issue of structure in creation, and how that issue was in one way approached by the new tool in the scientific toolchest, the microscope.

“…the Contrivances of the Almighty Creator is as visible in the meanest Insect of Plant, as in the greatest Leviathan or the strongest Oak. To touch upon all the Wonders this Instrument shews us would be infinite”–William Molyneux, on the microscope, in his A Treatise of Dioptricks in Two Parts (1692, quotation fro the second edition of 1709 via Marjorie Nicholson’s Science and Imagination, Cornell, 1956.

The question that the microscope—newly introduced and popularized by Robert Hooke in 1665 and Anton van Leeuwenhoek in 1674–was so able to address at this time was the question of the structure of things, and whether the Almighty Creator allowed for unrestrained creativeness or if the cosmos was subject to patterns and forms. The microscope was so tremendously nimble that it allowed its observers the luxury of finding “correct” answers on either/both sides of the issue, that arguments could be well made and sustained for variety and regularity. But of course all found the reason for either end of the argument deeply seated in the e hands of god, as seen in the lovely quote below by the great early microscopical popularizer, Henry Baker¹.

But this is just the tiniest bit of a nod at the question of structure in the history of science, a search for the relationships between, well, things small and large: atomic, molecular, cellular, organism, population, ecosystem,solar system, universe. The issue of structure may be the only issue–perhaps if you were made to select one question to have answered, automatically, an answer for everything, it might be this issue of how things stand in relations to one another.

Which gets us to this 1721 engraving of a tree-covered hill, following the designs of a human creator, a re-animator of the natural landscape according to a theory of beauty, part of which hangs in the form of a triangle in the right-hand upper corner. A three-sided strategy of the relationships in nature, provided by a human vision. A very small appreciation of an attempt to recognize the relationships between things, and in this case, the beauty of trees and hills.

Notes:

1. “The first Part of this Treatise discovers in the Particles of Matter composing Salts and saline Substances, Properties whose amazing Effects would surpass all human Belief or Conception, were we not convinced of their Truth by the strongest ocular Demonstration. That beautiful Order in which they arrange themselves and come together under the Eye, after being separated and set at Liberty by Dissolution, is here described and composed but one kind of figure, however simple, with Constancy and Regularity, we should declare it wonderful: What must we then fay, when we see every Species working as it were on a different Plan, producing Cubes, Rhombs, Pyramids, Pentagons, Hexagons, Octagons, or some other curious Figures peculiar to itself; or composing a Variety of Ramifications, Lines, and Angles, with a greater Mathematical Exactness than the most skilful Hand could . draw them?”

“Sensible of my own Ignorance, I pretend not to account how this is done: all I know is, that Chance or Accident cannot possibly produce Constancy and Order, nor inert Matter give Activity and Direction to itself. When therefore these Particles of Salts are seen to move in Rank and File, obedient to unalterable Laws, and compose regular and determined Figures, we must recur to that Almighty Wisdom and Power which planned out the System of Nature, directs the Courses of the Heavens and governs the whole Universe.” — Original, shorter quote of Henry Baker in his Employment of the Microscope (1753) found in Nicholson’s book; the above, longer version is from the 1764 (and second) edition, found here.

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Information, Quantitative Display of — Perception — Perspective — Prints–looking HARD/deeply at — Strange Things in the Sky