Author: JF Ptak

Maps of Invasions of Great Britain and the United States

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1274–Real and Imagined

America has almost never been invaded. I should clean that statement up a bit: the United States has almost never been invaded. America–which included North/Central/South once upon a time long in the dim past–was constantly invaded until the invasions no longer counted themselves as such, which I guess means that the “invasion” forces became “resupply”. (Perhaps an invasion is over once you surpass a certain ratio of houses : forts.)

“Invasion” does not include “attacks”. A few guys getting off a Nazi sub and wandering around until they got picked up (with some (all?) being executed) does not an invasion make. 9/11 was not an invasion, though the subsequent invention of impending and pervading fear was–that’s why we have “storm centers” rather than “weather reports” on broadcast news–but even that fear business was more home-grown than anything else.

The Japanese Army were on two small islands in the Aleutian chain (which may have been closer to Tokyo than NYC) for a bit in WWII–also does not make for an invasion, even if they were there for a long time. Or even if they were still there. Nor does sending hundreds or thousands of paper incendiary balloons across the Pacific an invasion make.

UFOs don’t count, either. (I still find it remarkable that such a large percentage of the hundreds of thousands of “sightings” has the UFO with landing or whatever lights on it. I figured out at one point that there has been a report on one of these critters every ____ minutes since Roswell. And in all of those hundreds of thousands or reports, if you took them all and stacked them one on top of the other, they would reach perhaps the height of a grain of sand.) The Beatles don’t count, either.

What also doesn’t count (but probably should) but which is not military–not really, though it may have the impact of a military force at some time in the future–are Chinese-made imports of, well, everything. At Thanksgiving I wondered how much of a dinner could be composed of foods that were shipped from China and to no great amazement an almost-complete table of food could be set, plus napkins, flatware, plates, candles, tablecloths, tables, chairs, paper turkey decorations, carpet, flooring, wallpaper, paint for the walls and ceiling, screws for the Chinese-made door hinges, lighbulbs, tubes for the McIntosh preamps, all of the clothing worn by the guests, and so on. The electricity is still American-made. The fact that Mott’s Apple Juice is coming from Chinese apples is a bad sniff of the future. The country of origin is usually on juice bottle necks-check it out.)

Certainly something that does count is the invasion by Great Britain of the United States in the War of 1812–they invaded long and deep enough to burn the White House and cause general havoc. We won that one. But of course the Brits were otherwise involved on the Continent.

Perhaps this non-invaded bit explains why the most-viewed post on this blog (with at last count was 400,000 views) was a LIFE magazine article from 1942 on the possible invasion routes to the U.S. Maybe the volume was driven by war-gamers, though I suspect it was made up largely of the curious who weren’t used to seeing “Invasion of” and “America” together in a military sense.

But now for the real stuff: a map of the 54 invasions of Great Britain (and “the places at which foreign troops have landed on British soil since 1066 (and all that), seen in the Illustrated London News for 27 March 1909):

And then this, where the WWII invasion routes were turned around:

This map pretty well tells the story of the perilous situation of Europe and England at the beginning of June, 1940. It appeared in the Illustrated London News on the heals of Churchill’s “Blood, Soil, Sweat and Tears” speech, and was a very frank presentation of the wearing of the war. By this point in the war Nazi Germany had successfully invaded Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, sweeping across Europe in a broad westward movement, backing up British and French troops all the way to the sea at Dunkerque, where a monumental rescue operation (“Operation Dynamo”) saved them. (There was an enormous amount of materiel left there on the beach, a devastating loss for the British Expeditionary Force, nearly crippling it.) This was a bad time for the Allies, this part of the war coined by Winston Churchill in 18 June 1940 in the House of Commons by: “The Battle of France is over. I expect the Battle of Britain is about to begin”. There was very little good that came of these few months for the U.K and the Allies, though four things do stand out: (1) as I just mentioned, the saving of 300,000+ troops at Dunkerque; (2) the resignation of Neville Chamberlain, (3) the coming of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister of the U.K., and (4) the first deciphering of the Enigma at Bletchley. Other than that, the situation was dim, and these invasion routes (published at t he very time that Germany was studying such a feat in its “Operation Sea Lion“, or “Unternehmen Seelöwe”). The endgame at Dunkerque took place almost four years to the day of the invasion of Europe, when the intent (though not placement) all of these arrows were turned around for the Allied operation at the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944..

And so, there it is–a presentation of several maps showing invasions, real and imagined

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Bad Ideas — Blank and Empty Things; A History of — Future, History of the — History of the Future — Maps, Cartography, History of Mapmaking — Maps/Diagrams of Imagination & Ideas — Militaria
Terrific Understatement Department; the Kaiser and the T.V.

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1273

There are some combined image/narrative displays that are quietly spectacular, soaringly spectacular in very not-provocative, subtle ways. Here are two that popped up last night.

The Sparton TV ad (from LIFE 1954) dares us to believe that it will get us to the thing that we are watching–a tremendously invasive lie, a Big Lie, buffeted by placing the TV in the middle of a desert from the scene it was/is projecting, along with the toys of a child. And in glorious black and white. We can obviously see that the television can’t get us there, not really, not at all, not better than a book (an enormous creative implement compared to the television), by the tv-set’s absurd appearance in the desert. Plus, well, the TV isn’t getting “you” to the place, it is getting itself there.

Now, Kaiser Wilhelm II–looking like quite the entry into the Anglosphere in this photo, which came easily for him since he was the grandson of Queen Victoria–was depicted in this image (appearing in the Illustrated London News for 7 November 1908 as a great peacemaker. Or at least a man who had extended himself to find solidarity with Great Britain–so much of himself in fact that he could extend no further, that he could do no more, hence the question “what more can I do than I have not done?”

IT has the quality of a post office “wanted” poster, which may actually be sort of true, what with what would happen in the next six years and all.

By 1918 the Kaiser was hiding in the neutral Netherlands, caught unawares out-of-town in Belgium when things went to hell in Berlin for him. And after the war with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Wilhelm II found himself in early 1919 facing Article 227 of that treaty, “for a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties”.   But he wasn’t extradited by a friendly Queen Wilhelmina (hint) in spite of the international call to do so. Well, “International” except for the United States, where President Wilson sought to infringe on Lincoln’s post-bellum treatment of the Confederacy by letting Wilhelm go, not prosecuted for the larger hope of keeping alive a chance for peace. Wilson should’ve looked a little harder for peace than in the Kaiser’s direction, as the Treaty really didn’t end the war as much as it started the next one.

The Kaiser last until 1951.



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A Photograph of the Food Consumed “by the Inebriate in Captivity”

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1272

I stumbled upon this while looking for an article on the Wright Brothers in The Illustrated London News. I figure that this may be the first opportunity in recent decades that a photograph of the dinner table of incarcerated British drunkards would be published–and some opportunities need to be serviced. No doubt that this was an ideal table setting and selection of food because, well, that’s what people do– they normally don’t present an average-something for photographic display in national/international media. Also the snapshot quality of the daily surroundings of the incarcerated was unusual, as was the Andrew Lang fairyland title to the two-page photo story.

And the food:

A full day’s serving: breakfast included a six-ounce white loaf of bread, a pint of tea–and an ounce of butter on the last day of the term. Dinner included six-ounces of white bread, twelve ounces of potatoes, four ounces of French beans, four ounces of fresh meat, and eight ounces of fruit pudding. Supper “was a pint of gruel”, pictured on right.

The life in the state reformatory as an alcoholic British woman was hardly “pleasant” as the title states, though we don’t know what the author was comparing this to. I suspect it was a general prison that was the benchmark for pleasantness, though perhaps it could have been an insane asylum , assuming of course that they didn’t seem nearly as pleasant as the “pleasant” scenes in these pictures. The reformatory for alcoholics in Great Britain was established more along the lines of an almshouse or mental institution and seemed not terribly coercive–though given the border decorations for the photos on these pages–keys–there is no doubt that these people were incarcerated “for their own and the community’s good.”.

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Anticipation, History of — Social History — Women, History of
Protopunk: Steampunk during the High Steam/Low Electric Age

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1270

I was drawn to this Steampunky collection of inventions because they were semi-futuristic inventions done at the time when the inventions could actually be fabricated–the idea was there and so was the material and expertise. The only thing left was the will to do it and the fortitude to use it. Perhaps the only thing lacking in all of it was that last part.

Certainly people were getting used to technical and physics breakthroughs when these images were published in 1908: the advancement of powered heavier-than-air flight since 1903, wireless transmission across the Atlantic in ’01, quanta in 1900, X-Rays in ’95, radium in ’98, automobiles, motion pictures, electric toasters, Gilette’s disposable razor (use and throw away!), and so on (I’ll not mention Einstein because he wasn’t really in the public eye in 1908), so taking an extra and probably unnecessary step in these inventions seen below felt natural. They were just a little on beyond necessary.

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Future, History of the — History of the Future — Technology, History of
Steampunk Anatomy–Cancer Holes, Nut and Bolts, Oil, Outer Space Belly Shirts and Heavy Things of the Future

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1269

What is it about science and the future and how the scifiction of the past (pre-1950’s) almost never could encapsulate the superior scientific innovation and discovery of its near future? It is marvelous and wickedly magnificent to look at some cover art and illustration for the pulp and not-so-pulpy science ficton, images that not only have a certain look and feel, but also a smell, a particular bookstore/basement pulp-paper-not-exposed-in-forty-years smell.

Steampunk Eye–that enormous ship, governed by a long, long pole with a small box witn an eye in it, being raised and lowered on pulleys:

The Steampunk Gigantic Enormous Stupendous Infinite Brain (also notice that folks are fleeing, running for their lives, witt heir arms thrown high into the air, running like SpongeBob SquarePants–its hard to run like that):

Steampunk Lust:

Steampunk Addiction & Cancer Hole:

And the Philip -Morris contribution for smoking in alien space:

Steampunk Humano-Robot Replicant:

Steampunk Thinking (the slide rule really didn’t give out until around 1970):

Steampunk Legs:

Steampunk Abs: humans are surrounded by arm-waving large-headed belly-shirted aliens, the man using a flashlight for defense )burning the alien eye even though they’re all in bright light) while the woman points really hard:

Steampunk Hair–and with all of that vast technology and futurismo, there are still unruly locks here and their:

Electro/Steampunk Body Replicator

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The Beauty of Ball Bearings

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1268

When I look at something like this–an advertisement for a company that produced precision instruments–I think instantly of industry, automation, Dada and Duchamp, who along with Cubists and Precisionist and Futurists whobrought out the extreme beauty of industrial, technical, instrumental form. At the same time its probably possible to unthink Engels and Marx who thought that the new coming art form of Communism would be purely functional, to be used in design and implementation only. And I’m not talking about the way that the Victorians added their Victorian crowns and laces and altars in the design of machines and machine parts, worshiping as they did at the shrine of tech science. Marx and Engels had something different in mind, a non-art of simple, employable, straightforward applied design.

This ad is just beautiful.

Which is a detail from this image (available from our blog bookstore, here):

Ball bearings are exceptionally important and have a long history, I mean, long stretching back more than 2000 years (in its most primitive form), finding formative articulation in the Renaissance, and then their first patent in 1869–long and off the point for right now, just long and a little complicated. I just want to say–I find this image to be quite lovely.

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Verticals and Lead-Spewing Gargoyles: Spires, Rifles, Bayonettes. Reims, November 27, 1918.

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1267

Verticals and Anticipation after Four Grueling Years

In developing a history of vertical lines I thought that I would look at single vertical lines, but having just stumbled across this in our WWI News Photo Service archive, I just could not resist. There is of course plenty of vertical arrangement here–just orders of magnitude more than what I was setting out to find. So it goes.

(The image is available from our blog bookstore, here.) And the detail:

And another:

I find this a soaring image, in its own odd way–this is a celebration scene, after,all, a decoration exercise, a military display of French forces that liberated the town of Reims, all taking place in front of the battered cathedral. Notre-Dame de Reims was the place of the coronation of French kings, and was a spectacular 13th century structure built on top of other buildings stretching back the site’s inhabitation to at least the 5th century.

But German artillery shelling caught the cathedral right at the beginning of the war and very nearly wrecked it. The building was badly damaged by fire, a fire caused by the Germans, which spread along the scaffolding on the building which fed the wooden supports and superstructures, the flames finding its way throughout the building. The fire was hot enough to melt the lead in the roof, which poured down as molten rain and out of the mouth-spouts of the building’s gargoyles.

As I brought out the further figures against the base of the cathedral one can clearly see the enormous stands of sandbags, the piles stacked up twenty feet or so behind the makeshift wooden fence. IT was some sort of protection for the building, but not muc.

This was yet another battle for the city, this one taking place 1550 years or so after the first, the Alemanni defending against the Romans; and then 104 years after the next major encounter, this between Napoleon and a Russian/Prussian force. The liberating battle (the Battle of Reims, or the Second Battle of the Marne) took place 15 July 1918 to 6 August 1918, and it was a major failure for the German army, and spelled the collapse of the Spring Offensive, opening the door to the end of the war. There were more than 135,000 Allies killed or wounded in this campaign (including 95,000 french troops), plus another 130,000 German troops.

The process of victory in front of the wounded church seems exhausting and exhilarating, bu tnot without a good sense of anticipation.

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Anticipation, History of — Architecture and Building — Militaria — World War I
WWI Photographs: German POWs, 1918

JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 1266

In the first image here we are introduced to a small group of captured German soldiers displaying a wide range of emotions over a wide range of faces. In the second image we see German prisoners though not with any helmets,.while lastly is a group of Irish/U.K. soldiers with German soldiers’ helmets with no Germans.

There were over 8 million soldiers taken prisoner during WWI, that in addition to the 21 million who were wounded and the 9.7 million killed: 38 million. Plus 6.8 million civilians who were killed: 45 million. And the numbers for civilians wounded are just, well, not reliable, as they were not really collected, or collectible. At the end of it all, there were probably between 50 to 75 million soldiers and civilians killed or wounded or taken captive during the war…not including civilians who were killed by the hardships or starvation caused by the conflict. Big, big numbers. (My post from yesterday looked at the population/percentages of these losses, here)

Image 1.(Original photograph available at our blog bookstore here.)

Detail: this shows struggle and age in a face that I reckon to be a mid-teen’s, a child’s face, hardened baby fat.

Detail:the older man isn’t much more so, just beaten, exhaustion.

Detail:they look defeated and concerned, though the middle guy (who doesn’t seem to quite fit in with the rest) looks as though he may be relieved. Maybe not.

In any event this is a grim photo–even the captor (Canadian?) looks non-committal.

In contrast is this photograph of uneven emotional display, showing American POWs in Germany in 1917:

Secondly is a photogravure showing a processional of captured German, taken circa. August 1918, and printed in 1919:

And the detail:

There were of course far greater collections of POWs, as seen in this picture:

The the last photo tells a different story (related more fully in an earlier post on this blog, here), a celebration of victory and survival:

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Militaria — World War I
WWI Photographs–the Trenches, 1916-1918

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1265

Perhaps one of the worst inventions in the history of warfare was The Trench. Millions of men were wounded or met their ends while defending one, or attacking one, or being in-between two of them. Hundreds of thousands of troops spent months charging back and forth between opposing lines, the ground over which they fought made uninhabitable for almost any form of life.

Earlier in this blog I wrote about sub-trench warfare--the story of the sappers who would mine underground, underneath the opposing force’s lines, digging a horizontal hole the end of which would be filled with explosives and detonated, exploding up, destroying the enemy’s trenches. Bad business. The trenches were bad enough without having to be vigilant against someone tunneling beneath, trying to make you into little pieces. Trenches were mostly cold, dark, miserable, wet, potential disease carriers, poison gas accumulators–and that’s of course before the shooting began. There were thousands of men–tens of thousands of men, hundreds of thousands–waiting in their trenches, waiting for the other side to try and advance, attack over the well-named no-man’s land, running across open ground in a hail of millions of bullets.

I’ve collected a few images that are here (and available at our blog bookstore) that give a little flavor of the trenches, and the men in the trenches–though without the scent of the stale water, or the bite of the chill, or the perpetually wet feet, or the cold, or the dysentery, or death’s constant pull and struggle.

This is an original photograph made by the Western Newspaper Union Photo Service, as a “British Official Photograph” (with the “British” part penciled out and replaced by an unknown hand, “Italian”), The photo agency supplied a caption for the image (that was supposed to have been used by the newspaper or magazine that published the picuture) as follows:

And the detail:

I’ve also put together a few examples from a collection of exceptional photogravures printed in 1919:

And the detail:

And a detail:

And another detail:

And a detail:

And the detail:

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WWI Photographs–Uncle Sam’s Metal Drive, June 1918

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1264

Like its more-famous WWII counterpart, scrap drives during The Great War were also frequently conducted. This is an original photograph showing just such a thing, depicting two Uncle Sams surrounded by Boy Scouts pulling a large hollow metal sphere–I believe that thin metal scrap would be hammered flat and then molded onto the sphere’s frame, though I’m not terribly sure. I am sure that this is a great photograph.

Another post on scrap drives (with original photographs) is located here on this blog.

(The original is available from our blog bookstore.)

and the detail:

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