Category: Information, Quantitative Display of

Measuring Things With 400′-Tall Cars (1912)

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post Part of the series Graphical Display of Quantitative Data

There is a lot of interesting material in this volume of the Scientific American Supplement for 1912. Initially I looked in it for a fantastic story about geoengineering and the flooding of the Sahara (a post is forthcoming), and in that browse I bumped into the following graphical/representative display of U.S. automotive production (in the article “Growth of the Automobile Industry”):

I’ve featured other such images on this blog–measuring things in terms pyramids, Trinity Churches, gigantic nails, enormous bread, Gargantuan soldiers, that sort–but nothing along the lines of these mammoth cars. The largest of the lot represents the overall auto production in the U.S. for 1911 (which was 300,000) which had they been made into one massive buggy would have been 442′ tall, and an unstated but commensurate length (which I guess would have been on the order of 2500′ long. The other bits are self-explanatory regarding imports and exports of autos in 1911, the data is there but the interpretation leaves it all a bit wanting. In any event I really just wanted to capture the Big Car.

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An Escher-Like Non-Escher Architectural Image

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This image really lifted itself from the page–it is from 1880 and has to me a very heavy scent of M.C. Escher to it. This would be a very “found” aspect of pre-Escher (1898-1972), but it does have an indefinable quality to it that seems very 20th-century. What we are seeing here is a perspective of the construction of the “New Church of the Oratory of South Kensington” (known as the Brompton Oratory), but I think given the various stages of completion of the structure the whole of it takes on a spherical, three-dimensional quality, and has a somewhat impossible-looking aspect, as though from multiple viewpoints. I think we’re looking down through the naive, and though it is supposed to be representating a three-dimensional figure it seems profoundly not so.

[Source: The Building News, June 25, 1880; Herbert Gribble, architect.]

What it reminds me of directly is Eshcer’s relativity, from 1952:

I know that what I’ve said about the Building News image is reaching, and it wasn’t dealing with unusual geometries, or tessellations, or the oddish curved perspectives of Escher, but, well, it does somehow have that quality.

And an interesting detail:

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Industrial & Technological art — Information, Quantitative Display of — Perception — Perspective — Prints–looking HARD/deeply at
A Beautiful Infographic With Little Info to “Graph” (1835)

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Victor Levasseur (1800–1870) was a French cartographer who crippled and broke the modern line about not spending ink on a informational design that did not carry some sort of specific and necessary data. It seems that most of Levasseur’s ink was decorative–but that’s okay, I guess, because the effects today look quite handsome–and also it should be remembered that at the time the man was not exactly awash in detailed data. That said, he produced this beautiful little miniature map showing the comparative heights of mountains, though the detail is more-or-less generally lacking, and frankly I’m comfortable with that.

[Source: “Tableau Orographique” a miniature map by Victor Levasseur (1795-1862), published in his Atlas Classique Universel de Geographie …, about 1835]

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Information, Quantitative Display of — Maps, Cartography, History of Mapmaking — Maps/Diagrams of Imagination & Ideas
Unusual Maps: a Weighted Radio Map of the U.S. 1937

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

To read the title of the pamphlet The Radio Dealer’s Handbook (1937) in a sales catalog would do little to excite any particular zeal, though to see its cover probably would spark an interest enough to at least browse the pamphlet. And browsing was a happy thing, as I found several infographics,including a terrific map of the U.S. showing the states in proportionate sizes according to radio ownership. Well, it shows the U.S. and Canada, which evidently sported as many radios as Massachusetts and exists on this map looking very much like a mini-U.S. It also seems as though radio ownership in the Dust Bowl regions was very restricted, the land area north of Oklahoma to the border is about as thin as a swizzle stick.

And a graphic representation of how well radios reproduce various sounds (that was to be used by radio salesmen in influencing their customers’ selections):

And the very seldom seen layout of a radio shop:

And the cover of the pamphlet and source of these images:

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Information, Quantitative Display of — Maps, Cartography, History of Mapmaking — Maps/Diagrams of Imagination & Ideas
History of Lines–the Use of Thick and Bold Lines in Information, 1862

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

I have posted many times to this blog over the last eight years on interesting examples of the graphical display of information (mostly in the category of “Information, Quantitative Display of”) that included subjects like the comparative heights of mountains and lengths of rivers, ocean depths, divorce rates, fatalities from various diseases, literacy, the location of the population centers of the U.S., what 50,000 B-17s looked like if they were to fly at the same time, and so on. Most of these are 19th century vintage, though there are a fair number now from before WWII, though the more recent varieties show unusual bits like the amount of food consumed by an average family over the course of a year, the history of hemlines in dresses, the changes in the vital measurements of the White Rock girl, and the like.

The following map–depicting immigration origins and relative amounts and destinations–is somewhat unusual not only for the early date and manner in which the info is displayed, but also in the design–the data is not crowded out from the field of vision by anything but the broadest outlines of geography, almost all details are left off the map, which also uses two pale colors to set off the land and the sea, allowing the graphed colors to stand brilliantly apart.

[Map source–the Library of Congress, http://tile.loc.gov/image-services/iiif/service:gmd:gmd3:g3201:g3201e:ct000242/full/pct:25/0/default.jpg]

The map is the work of the early innovator and information-explorer Charles Minard, who is most known for his famously ubiquitous depiction of the death of Napoleon’s army in its advance upon and retreat from Moscow (see https://robots.thoughtbot.com/analyzing-minards-visualization-of-napoleons-1812-march).

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History of Lines — Information, Quantitative Display of — Maps, Cartography, History of Mapmaking — Maps/Diagrams of Imagination & Ideas
Potentially Useless Info Dept.: Scientists Quoted in Definitions in the OED

JF Ptak Science Books Post 2574

Prompted by an Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Day post by my friend Carolyn Ogburn in which a word’s origin quote citation was by H.L. Mencken I decided to look around for others by the BoB (“Bard of Balmer” and author of multi-editions of The American Language). The online version of the OED has a lot search possibilities, including the search for author/quotation (which can be expanded by a year range), and so it occurred to me to have a quick look at the quotations used for scientists.

[The correct Francis Bacon, via wikipedia images]

My search was arbitrarily limited to one hour and outside of that was somewhat random though I did try to select folks who I thought might be more “quotable” or who could have contributed in significant ways to the English language in their work in general. It turns out in the 30-odd names I selected the person who was quoted the most was…Francis Bacon (3,509 citations). Oddly though when I checked out Roger Bacon I found absolutely nothing. It seemed to me that a classical figure like Aristotle might have a lot but it turns out for probably obvious hindsight reasons that this is not the case, as the old man weighed in at 204. Robert Boyle came in at 2670 which led me straight away to John Dalton, who came in at only 28, and then to Humphrey Davy (48), and finally to Joseph Priestly (with zero). Then came the generally very very busy and innovative/creative genius Robert Hooke (512), and of course the next logical step from there was Isaac Newton, who would be annoyed to learn that he was beaten here by his dreaded colleague (308). William Whewell (who introduced the word “scientist” had 473 entries, while Charles Darwin registered 1,311 (while Charles Lyell came in at 1034 and Alfred Russell Wallace at zero). The great founding partners of 19th century science came away with relatively not-many (Faraday at 349, Babbage at 155, and Clerk Maxwell at 183), all of whom were handily put away by John Tyndall (2025). The 20th century folks are mostly shadows and mist: Bethe, Feynman, Oppenheimer, and Gell-Mann come in at 0; A.A. Michelson (straddling the century) had 2, Hubble 8, Dirac 21, Bohr 22, Hawking 24, Rutherford 26, Penrose 30, Gamow 37, E.O. Wilson 52, Carl Sagan 62. Musicologist Alfred Einstein had 107 entries while Albert Einstein–oddly, perhaps, though he was not a native English speaker–had 13.

Female scientists get very little reaction from the OED editors. Rachel Carson leads the way, but not by very much and with very little: 14. Marie Curie comes up with 3 (I. Curie has 1 and P. has 2), and then, when I check out the long list of possibilities, no one gets any: Meitner, Apgar, McClintock, Herschel, Grace Hopper, Hypatia, and so on. I even checked out Ada Lovelace who arguably does not fit here but given her popularity I thought might show up with something, but there wasn’t a mention.

What does this mean? I don’t know, and I’m not sure that there is any useful takeaway from this–except the obvious conclusions that you reach when you consider the absence of women in quotation citations. It is understandable that Leonardo appears in only 4 quotations (not having much of a printed output and living in another language), and I think I can understand why Francis Bacon leads the way in this sample, probably because he slipped across so many different disciplines–but everything else may be a soft blended nothing, though it is interesting, like too much whipped cream on a Sundae.

[The incorrect Francis Bacon, via wikipedia images]

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Information, Quantitative Display of
Japan Attacks L.A. (and the Rest of Us) in 1937
JF Ptak Science Books Post 2573

Earlier in this blog I posted about an article that appeared in Life magazine on the various invasion/attack routes on the United States in 1941. (I believe this was the most visited of all 4000+ posts over eight years, with something on the order of 200k visits.) It came to mind while I was working my way through the P.J. Mode Persuasive Map Collection (digitized) at Cornell University and found this glorious appraisal of the possibilities of a Japanese attack on Los Angeles and the western U.S. It screamingly appeared in the Los Angeles Examiner on November 7, 1937 (p. V-8), and no doubt was meant to incite some sort of thinking in the paper’s reading population. (I don’t think it a coincidence that California is shown in yellow in the details when under attack and blue before being attacked.) Remember that the Japanese had already been mucking around in China for several years and the (Second) Sino-Japanese War was already full-on for a year by this point, so giving the possibility of Japanese imperial designs on the U.S. in 1938 is not necessarily so far out of reach. (On the other hand many of the high command in Japan thought it a miserable and in some cases an insane idea to finally attack the U.S. in 1941, so there’s that–plus there’s the larger and more substantial issue of the incredible amount of ships and planes and support and energy that goes into manufacturing an invasion of this scope that would just be out-of-hand for Japan.) All that said, it is an interesting to see this play out in the pages of the Examiner.
- Mapping the Invasion of America, 1942 https://historyofideasblog.com/thesciencebookstore/2009/12/mapping-the-invasion-of-america-1942.html
- Invasion Routes to the U.S. 1940 https://historyofideasblog.com/thesciencebookstore/2011/06/invasion-of-the-us-1940.html
- The Invasion of America, 19?? (1935) https://historyofideasblog.com/thesciencebookstore/2010/01/the-invasion-of-america-19-1935-scenario-for-invasions-via-canada-mexico-and-the-caribbean.html
[Source: PJ Mode Persuasive Maps Collection, at Cornell: https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:3293952]

And the vision for San Francisco:

[Source: PJ Mode Persuasive Maps Collection, at Cornell: https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:3293952]

And the full page, showing the importance of the Aleutians to the general plan:

[Source: PJ Mode Persuasive Maps Collection, at Cornell: https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:3293952]
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Information, Quantitative Display of — Militaria — Propaganda
Unusual WWII Maps by a Significant Soviet Intelligence Agent

JF Ptak Science Books

I’ve found a number of interesting maps in the pamphlet collection here–these are highly unusual to my experience in that they were the work of a firm called “Geopress”, which was an active business and cover for a significant intelligence agent for the Soviet Union, operating in Switzerland, collecting data relating to German activities during WWII. There’s nothing I can add beyond the information that I quote extensively below from the CIA website on Rado–except that I cannot find images/examples of his Geopress work. So it seems the most efficient thing to do here is to simply quote the known sources and reproduce the images of the 18 maps and their accompanying texts.

As I said Rado operated Geopress as a news/cartographic service, and Rado was an accomplished cartographer, so the mans in and off themselves as maps are perhaps not a singular issue. Their evident scarcity, however, does seem to be an issue. Also I do not understand why these maps are so small, some of which are just 1″x 3″; also the uneven;y cut/torn text sheets that are made to accompany the maps are also puzzling in their own way. I do not understand the format–someone out there in Weblandia no doubt will.

All of the maps shown below are from 1942. They were received by the Library of Congress in June 1943 and stamped so on the backs of the maps. (They lived for some time in the “Pamphlet Collection” at the LC before being purchased by me in 1998.)

The following quotes come from the CIA website, the Center for the Study of Intelligence, here: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol12i3/html/v12i3a05p_0001.htm]

“Alexander (Sandor) Rado, Alexander Foote’s chief in the Swiss-based “Rote Drei” net that in 1941-43 supplied Moscow with detailed information on German order of battle… His activity in intelligence, mapping, and related fields has lasted nearly 50 years and may earn him a place in the pantheon of major intelligence figures of the times.”

And this:

“In 1936 or 1937, with Soviet funds and having a Swiss citizen as silent partner, Rado organized Geopress, a news agency specializing as Inpress had in maps and geographic background data. Geopress was more successful than Inpress because of better organization and the increased demand for news maps in the advancing shadows of World War II. As cover for an intelligence operation it proved ideal. Its normal activity—news collection and dissemination—provided justification for contacts with businessmen, officials, diplomats, journalists, and military leaders, some of whom became intelligence sources. It also justified a large volume of telephone and telegraph traffic, extensive postal business, and the maintenance of a courier system.”

And so:

“While building up his Geopress cover Rado also developed his sources, organized communications, and summarized for transmission the reports collected by his growing network. And he even found time to maintain through publications his image as an internationally known geographer.”

And:

“24 Feb. 1945. During the German occupation of Hungary, (Rado) lived in Geneva where (he) published geographical maps for the Allied Governments until 1943; discovered by the GESTAPO and consequently his relatives in Hungary were murdered/ went with family to Paris in September 1944 and continued his work/summoned to Russia to report on his activities with the Free French Organization and left on 8 Jan. 1945 by special plane for Moscow/suspecting a trap, he got off the plane in Cairo where he remained/received no news from his wife in Paris and suspects that she might have been deported/he was formerly a Fellow of the Geographical Society in London, New York, Paris, Geneva, Rome and Washington, D.C. OFFICE OF CENSORSHIP, Egypt, 11 April 1945.”

[Again, the source for this and the above quotes: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol12i3/html/v12i3a05p_0001.htm]

The maps:

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Information, Quantitative Display of — Maps, Cartography, History of Mapmaking — Maps/Diagrams of Imagination & Ideas — Militaria — Propaganda
Maps of Torment: the U-Boat Menace, 1917/1918

JF Ptak Science Books

This is a pretty stark reminder of just what was going on in the waters around Great Britain in 1917–it is a postcard propaganda map showing the gross tonnage of ships sunk by U-Boats for 1917:

[Image source: P.J. Mode’s wonderful collection of what he refers to as “Persuasive Maps”, now housed at Cornell University.]

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An Unusual Chronological-Timeline-World Map (1887)

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The details of this chronological chart/map caught my eye–the genealogy trees look to me very out-of-place or -time, speaking in terms of design, and seem to have a definite mid-20th century feel to them:

They are found in the left section of Jakob Skeen’ s 1887 Genealogical Chronological And Geographical Chart. Embracing Biblical And Profane History Of Ancient Times From Adam To Christ, which is part of my friend P.J. Mode’s wonderful collection of what he refers to as “Persuasive Maps”, now housed at Cornell University. I don’t often see chronologies of this detail with embedded maps, which is another odd bit about this display of information; overall, it is unusual to my experience:

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