Author: JF Ptak

JF Ptak Science Books LLC

The Illustrated London News published this very sobering image showing the general reader in London in 1933.  It is entitled “In Memory of the 1,104,890 British Dead of the Great War”, and was drawn by D. Macpherson.  It very graphically represents all of the war dead of the British Empire of 1914-1918, depicted as a line of men, four across, extending from London to Durhham.  The column passes from London through Hitchin, through Bedford and Peterborough and Grantham, past Sheffield and Leeds and York, and then on to Durham.  An extraordinary column of the war dead: 900,000 of the dead were not soldiers at the beginning of the war, but they sure died that way, and this map shows them all in a line, marching from  a point 269 miles distant.

Some of the most striking things in my collection/store/accumulation are the hundreds of images that portray data for display purposes–even more so, those that use a vernacular setting to bring closer to home an understanding of a statistic or finding.

(One of the most popular books on this subject is The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte, which uses a number of interesting images (good and bad) for the purposes of his book. Another, by fellow Asheville resident Peter Turchi (director of the MFA program for writers at Warren Wilson College) is Maps of the Imagination, the Writer as Cartographer,  which hosts a large number of interesting images the stories of which are richly and elegantly woven–this is a real piece of craftsman, and pretty, and useful, too.)

The print that we’re looking at here appeared in the 19 December 1908  issue of The Illustrated London News and is entitled “The Futility of Herr Rudolf Martin’s Plan of Invasion by Aeroplane”. This fantastic piece of annonymous artwork graphically depicts what the author maintained was the impossibility of Germany to invade England by landing 50,000 flying machines and 100,000 men on the Kentish coast of England–impossible (quantly though realistically) because “of the impossibility of finding landing-room (for the planes) and cover for an army on aeroplanes”. The artist depicts a small town and what I guesstimate to be 60 planes in the air and 75 or so on the ground, leaving it to the imagination of the reader where the other 49, 875 might go. He DOES make a point, and very vividly.

“Nothing could show better the futility of Government Councillor Rudolf Martin’s idea that Germany could construct 50,000 flying machines for 50-million pounds…and land 100,000 men on the Kentish coast from Calais within half an hour.” Evidently Mr. Martin was very concerned with the invasion of England by Germany via airplane, and it was the editor’s job at the ILN to show him
misguided. I would imagine that this illustration drove the point home
to the folks who didn’t actually bother to read anything about the
Martin defense plan. (It was in a similar way that Thomas Nast was able
to control public opinion and sway political refuge and protection away
from Boss Tweed. Tweed famously boasted that he didn’t care what the
newspapers said about him because his power base didn’t read–he
might’ve been and probably was correct here, so Nast took after Tweed
via the political cartoon, and big too, and frequently; and the
cartoons, even if the people looking at them couldn’t read, told the
whole story graphically, and it was this that brought an end to Tweed
more than anything else.)

Martin fueled vast public concern with his procurement. Again in 1908 he granted an interview to the Daily Mail in which he outlined another plan by which he felt Germany could launch 3,500 “specially design” airships (I’m guessing dirigibles) and land 350,000 (!) men in England in, again, that half-hour time period. (I have no idea how you would do this, even today.) His speculations were well-discussed in the British press, and then found their way to Germany and Berlin,     where Rudolf’s plans against such an incredible non-existent attack by the Germans was ruefully considered. (The ILN was making the point by addressing Mr. Martin as “Herr” Martin that he was doing more harm than good in his yellowpapers.)  This evidently whipped itself into a frothy aeroplanitis in 1909, despite such efforts as this graphical reasoning by the ILN to dispense with the unreasonable fears.

The airplane flown by the Wrights, the first powered heavier-than-air flight, occurred barely six years prior to these frantic events–the invention was still fresh (and basically “foreign”, as the Brits lagged well behind the other major powers in flight until WWI)–and understandable in a way that the fears were not understandable, not really, because of the newness and exotic aspect of the threatening invention.

For a tour of the chronological history of the graphical representation of quantitative data as well as innovations in statistical and representational cartography, please have a look at Michael Friendly’s  magnificent site--it is an historical site the way it should be done, complete with all the trimmings, as well as the usually-absent but very important citations to the orginal articles used in the chronology. 

I wanted to return and add a bit to an earlier notice concerning a series of drawings that I found utterly fascinating—the earliest illustrations of the active formation representing visualized human thought.  (I know that this titling is ungainly, but it seems to be the least inelegant solutions to stating the idea of what the images represent.)  It so happens that Francis Galton approached this same issue—though without pictorial representation—in an earlier paper with the unusual and provocative title of “Visions in Sane Persons” (1881).  Working further through this thesis and publishing an illustrated report in 1882, he continued, and greatly expanded, the study in a 26-page chapter called “Number-Forms” in his book Inquiries into Human Faculties and its Development (1883, with a second edition appearing in 1909).  Galton includes another 71 images of visualizing arithmetic, plus others on general images of mental images of numbers and letters—there is also a small but beautiful section on associations between colors and numbers and letters.  (These are all depicted in the first four images on this page.)

G.T.W. Patrick (a professor of philosophy at the state university of Iowa) published one of the earliest papers in response to Galton’s work.  In “Number-forms”, published in the Popular Science Monthly in February 1893 (pp 504-515, and “illustrated”), Patrick addresses and expands Galton’s work somewhat, including another eighteen wonderful illustrations of similar images.

But the path back to Galton is not quite a straight one.  Galton was initially concerned with imaging of numbers and numbers forms while people were performing mental calculations.  Patrick on the other hand asked his subjects if they had associative images in their mind of numbers—formally, he asked them if the number series of 1-9 presented itself in a visual, representative way in their minds.  In the second and third parts of his three-part inquiry, he asked the same question about letters and the alphabet, and then, thirdly, if they perceived any sense of color from letters and numbers, and what then what those exact relationships were.

It is interesting that in the studies of Galton and Patrick that over time in each of the subjects tested that (in Galton’s words) the images were “absolutely unchangeable except for a gradual development of complexity”.  Since I (like Galton, which is probably the only time I will ever be able to associate myself with this man
in terms of familiar traits) have no such images in my head when I think about mathematics or numbers or letter or words in general, it is remarkable to me on the human scale that people who have these associations would have the same ones time after time.  A movable feast, as it were.  Of course it would make sense that this reference system would be constant—but for someone that doesn’t ‘see” these images at all, the fact that they are so flowing and lucid and unchanging is simply difficult for me to imagine. (In a few weeks I’ll return to this issue, looking at how some prodigiously gifted people “see” with their special attributes.)

Images below are from the Patrick paper:

There’s plenty of room for Big Science, as Big Science makes room for itself:  the Manhattan Project, RADLAB at MIT, CERN, Los Alamos, Human Genome Project are all examples of (really) big science, not to mention science cities like Oak Ridge, Tsukuda Academic Center (Japan)  and Akademorduk (Russia).  There’s  a much bigger list of big science, but what I want to get at right now is a look at Little Science, teeny-tiny science, and the home of the Good Idea.

During the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings (which was constantly on the radio in the background) my friend Walter Johnson and I set out to move a half-ton piece of equipment,. in the dead of night, with no tools.  The object of course had no wheels, measured a very cubey 7x4x3 feet (or so), and presented itself in a primal crouch, like 6 refrigerators on their sides.  The Thing, a color photographic developer, needed to be put on its side, then moved down a 75’ hallway, then placed on end (!!) and then placed in a truck.

We had a ratchet set and a few screwdrivers for tools—plus three roundish fence posts that we found in the trash outside.

We removed as much of the innards as possible (it was a working machine so it needed to be put back together again), and were able to get it on its side so that it would fit through a door and down the hall.  I think that being bearish brutes we just muscled the thing over.  We of course used the logs to roll the beast down the hallway, a la the way we used to imagine the Egyptians moving monoliths.  We even knew how to get the thing upright—the big deal, though, was to get it back down again, horizontally, to get it into the truck.


This was, as Frank Zappa would say, the crux of the biscuit.

Walter was and is a severely, acutely intelligent man with great creativity and a big sense of humor.
Looking at our little bit of Stonehenge, trying to think of a way to move it from vertical to horizontal without damaging this slippery heavy stinking machine, and to continue using cave-man tools, was a thorny issue.

Walter cracked it in an instant.

We had five or six one-gallon jugs of water with screw tops—I think Walter had already consumed two gallons of it (he’s a big man, too)—that would serve the purpose.  Walter duct-taped the tops back on four of the empty jugs, taped the jugs across the top of the Beast, and then pushed the thousand-pound brute over.  The jugs acted perfectly, like shock absorbers; the caps stayed on, the machine never touched the ground, and we moved it into the truck and off into the night, celebrating our victory with warm Guinness. 


It was a gorgeous and instant solution to a knotty problem, and a perfect application of a little sci and mechanics.  Of course you had to be able to see the simplest, most direct solution to the problem, which Walter did, and then have the necessary tools in the trash around you to make the dream come true.  But we hadn’t thought of that end bit, the lowering of the machine without damaging it part, which was such a heart breaker for the moment before Walter said that he knew how to do it.  But Walter was always like this, always hyper-smart and intuitive—he can master complex issues quickly and remember it all (I showed him Bergmann’s book on pi one day and without prompting he began to recite the pi through at least 50-places)—but the big deal was to recognize the shortest, best, most elegant solution to a problem.  And seeing that thousand pound behemoth fall safely to the ground as if on pillows is about the best exclamation mark that I can think of when talking about solutions like this.

Happy 50th Birthday, Walter Johnson

Here’s an unusual musical bit using the first thousand places of pi for a piano solo.

In 1982 Werner Herzog, in what may have been the culmination of a weirdly fashioned and irresistible death-wish effort, released a film that he wrote and directed:  Fitzcarraldo.  It is a spill-over big, magnificent film about a would-be ice-making rubber baron bringing an opera house into the trans-Andes, trying to make his way into the dense forest in a huge (320 tons) steamboat on the Amazon to stake a claim in exploiting previously un-leased lands filled with rubber trees  The problem faced by Fitzcarraldo (played by the probably-slightly-insane Klaus Kinski¹–just see Herzog’s 1972 Aguirre, Wrath of God and you’ll know what I mean) is that his path is blocked by unnavigable rapids–he can however reach his destination by hauling his very large ship up and over a mountain to get to a more pliant river and then to his goal.  Herzog actually does this for the film–no digital anything here^2,3–in what is one of the most glorious things I’ve ever seen in the movies.  He really does have native people clear a path up the side of a mountain, and they DO haul this ship up and over.  It is truly magnificent, especially seeing the boat moving slowly up a mountain as background to a sweating Fitz.  

The story is partially based upon the adventure of Carlos Fermín Fitzcarrald, who in 1890 attempted a similar feat, though with a much smaller vessel, and who also dismantled the craft to haul it overland. (Its not a bad idea, necessarily, to do this dismantling thing, especially if it has to be done and there’s no other way to do it. The North Vietnamese famously did the impossible by hauling artillery up through the jungle and up mountains to shockingly surround the French at Dien Bien Phu.) 

   The bigger and deeper back-story though is the effort–mainly by Elmer Corthell and James Eads–to build a combination railroad ship canal across the Tehuantepec isthmus in Nicaragua.  The idea of moving across Central America rather than taking the enormously long route around the tip of South America and up again is hundreds of years old.  The Corthell/Eads plan, begun in 1870’s and alive in the early ’80’s, was really the first feasible (and workable) initiative.

It would have been a gigantic undertaking, and even though it was much longer (130 miles or so)  than the more-favored Panama location for the canal, it seemed more workable as there would be less digging and no need for a lock/canal system as required at Panama. 

The French began a doomed attempt at conquering Panama shortly before this.  Ferdinand de Lesseps tried to build a canal in 1880, but the organization and general construction plan was truly inferior; also, the sanitary and medical conditions were terrible, with the French losing perhaps 22 thousand men in the failed process to disease (mainly malaria).  (The United States would lose 5,609 workers while building the Panama canal, on land granted as a payback for “helping” Panama release themselves from Columbia.)

The Corthell/Eads (who by the way was a master builder perhaps best known for his inspired masterpiece of a bridge at St. Louis) plan called for hauling the ships up and out of the water in a short canal and placing them on an enormous floating roundabout; the roundabout would then be raised, and the ship place on huge cradles borne upon vastly augmented railway lines.  Once on the cradle, the ship would be pulled and pushed by a team of four large locomotive teams which were in turn composed of two large engines.  Happily aboard, the ship would then be taken on the extended, expanded wide and augmented rail 130 miles overland and dumped into the Pacific.

It was evidently not a workable deal all the way around, though, as the U.S. decided on the new Panama to works its engineering miracle.

There is something pleasing though about the Ship Railway, though, something that appeals to the little bit of Mr. Herzog in me.  Perhaps it was the appraisal of the very stiff-lipped Sir Edward Reed–who was the former master engineer for the British navy and consultant to Eads—that makes it all so irresistible.  “It would be best to avoid a very high rate of speed” when hauling the massive ocean-going and heavily laden cargo ships.  Indeed.

Notes

1. The original actor in the Fitzcarraldo role was Jason Robards, who had to give the film up after about a third or so the way through as he came down with dysentery. Kinski came into the role after that, and the film was re-shot. 

2. There is a scene showing the steamboat being unmoored and sent down the rapids on its own–that is done with a model. So far as I know, that is the only bit of post production trickery for the film. 

3. There’s an interesting documentary of the film also released in 1982, Burden of Dreams.

It is odd to think among the great classifiers of nature, including even the lofty-namer Aristotle, that clouds were not scientifically classified until the early 19th century.   Here they are, just about the biggest thing we have as earthlings that are gigantic and close to us, and nobody offered a good classifications scheme until 200-odd years ago—a pretty slim margin of time  in the terms of recorded human history. 

Clouds are of course problematic, what with floating around and all—but if you didn’t already know the relative newness of their recognizable names isn’t it shocking to learn this bit of history? For the most part I think clouds must have been thought as being too transient, changeable, whimsical, wispy, to be given proper names.   The great scientist and classifier Lamarck tried to do so in his  Annuaire Méteorologique of 1802, and really is the first to try this, but his ideas weren’t terribly good (especially compared to the rest of his work), and it seems as though he left his best thinking effort on clouds at home.  For example, he gave us Hazy, dappled, massed, broom-like and grouped clouds as classifications (in French, respectively, en forme de voile, pommelés, attroupés,  en balayeurs and groupés).  They seem quite “French” to me, but largely outside the scope of being useful. 

It was the English pharmacist and chemist Luke Howard who in 1803 gave a greater bit of thought to structuring cloud names, classifying them according to size and shape and giving them Latin names—and this forms the basis of our naming clouds to this day.  Howard was perhaps the first, greatest, meteorologist, producing On the Modification of Clouds, (in which he describes his naming system, the “modification” part actually meaning classifying rather than changing),  The Climate of London, and the first textbook on weather,  Seven Lectures on Meteorology.  Howard’s system was expanded in 1887 by Abercromby and Hildebrandsson, who further classified clouds by height above ground as well as by appearance (and utilizing Howard’s naming system). 

Howard began his system by identifying three basic shapes to clouds: heaps, layers, and curls.  Heaps of separated cloud  masses with flat bottoms and bulbous, splayed, tops, which he called cumulus, which is Latin for heap; the Latin stratus was applied to clouds in layers which were much wider than they were thick; and again to Latin for cirrus, which called out the wispy curls of clouds.  (Rain clouds were given the Latin nimbus, for rain, and so on.) 

It is interesting and romantic to think of Howard being moved in his love of clouds as many Brits and Europeans were in the Volcanic Year of 1783 by the enormous eruptions of the Eldeyjar (Iceland) and Asama Yama (Japan) volcanoes—the force of their eruptions caused enormous changes in the skies (especially in Europe), creating vast sky-borne tapestries (the “Great Fogg” in England) and for such extended periods of time that it would have been impossible for the scientifically-minded Howard not to see them. 

Similar, in a way, to clouds is the snow crystal (snowflake)—they change forms in their lives from sky to ground, and may well disappear on contact with a warm surface.  Of course unlike clouds they may fall and be captured, kept even, though the ability to actually perform some sort of scientific something with them didn’t occur until 400 years ago, which means that snowflakes passed in and out of human existence being very simply named (in most languages) as a mass group, and not classified at all.

Johannes Kepler thought very deeply in In 1611 publishing a short treatise called On the Six-Cornered Snowflake, thinking that perhaps their (mistaken) six-cornered symmetry revealed something much deeper about the basis of nature and the universe. The 26-year-old  Robert Hooke seems to be recognized as the first to throw the snowflake under a microscope, publishing drawings of them and just about everything else that he saw in his monumental (and tall, being 13-inches tall) Micrographia (1665)–the first truly scientific book of modern times.  The largest of the large images was saved for the flea, showing the unsuspecting public the great and beautiful nature of what seemed like a fantastical beast (under magnification).  Snowflakes appeared in the book, revealed in their intricate and seemingly-symmetrical nature.  Fantastic, unimagined images. This aside, he seems to have, um, borrowed these images from an earlier work, Thomas Bartholin’s  De Nivus usu Medico Observationes Varieae, 1661.  But so it goes. 
 

The Galileo of the snowflake was Wilson Bentley (1865-1931), an autodidact Vermont farmer, seen by fellow hamlet-dwellers as odd and off, who figured out how to photographically and beautifully record the intricacies of the snow crystal world—no one had ever done this so dramatically, with such gorgeous results.  It really was as though he was able to record the heights of the mountains of the moon with a slender telescope in Pisa, 350 years earlier. The results of his decades of experience were published  in 1931 his book Snow Crystals, containing more than 2400 snow crystal images.  On the heals of Bentley’s accomplishments came the classically trained nuclear physicist Ukichiro Nakaya, who was truly the first person to apply a scientific classification to snowflakes, and who published his intrepidly-beautiful work in a 1954 book entitled Snow Crystals: Natural and Artificial.  His classification system of the various types of snowflakes would prove vastly more useful, interesting and appealing than that published by the 1951 the International Commission on Snow and Ice, and forms the basis of the discussion of snow crystals today—a classification system of a massively-occurring phenomenon that is younger than me.