Books offered by JF Ptak Science Books

The Fabulous First Great Drop--the Discovery of the Complex World of Splashes, 1877.

ITEM: Scientific American Supplement, 25 August, 1877.  Full weekly issue, with the Worthing article ("On Drops")  appearing on two pages.  14x10 inches.  Pp 1359-1374.  $95.00

ref: JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1350

 

A.M. Worthington published his extraordinary researches in capturing drops and splashes  just a year after the invention of the telephone--seeing his very quietly magnificent work would've been worth the phone call, even at those heady rates at the beginning of the new medium. Worthington was the first in his field, and for a short while, before he told anyone, he was the only person on the planet who had ever seen the fantastic complexity of this very common and previously-simple event.   In its own way these photographs showing the deformation of a drop of milk (and mercury) were as much a revolution as the images shown by Robert Hooke in his epochal Micrographia in which he (just about the next-best-thing to Newton) introduced the fabulous complexities of the previously microscopical world(s).

The series of semi-photographic images that Worthington was able to make of the drops and splashes could not be readily reproduced in the Scientific American at this time--the half-tone was still a few years away, and the only way outside of making a drawing after the photograph in 1877 would've been a process (like, say, the Woodburytype) that would have been much too expensive to use in a mass-market publication like SciAm. Also, the photographic plates in 1876/7 weren't quite up to the task of fixing an image exposed so quickly.  Even when Worthington's book is published on this subject--a popular effort in 1895--it reproduces the photographs as halftones but there are still many interpretative drawings of those images. (The belief in the Civil War images reproduced as woodcuts in places like Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's was very high--it was enough to know the woodcut was being executed after a photograph and not from drawings made on the spot by the magazines' field artists.)

This was some pretty sophisticated stuff, being able to freeze the action of a drop of milk as it exploded in slow stages on a flat surface--especially, again, when you consider that photography wasn't yet 40 years old and was really only a half-decade or so into its first major revolution since the early 1850's. 

Perhaps though the most spectacular thing of all about seeing this dedicated series of images of an exploding drop of milk was that you could look at the series and imagine it all taking place in reverse . 

The drawings and photos below are taken from his 1895 work, The Splash of a Drop:

 

A Note on the History of Bad Beds (Bedlamia 2): the Utica "Crib" and Putting the Insane to Sleep, 1880.

ITEM: Report of the Proceedings for Establishing a Board of Commissioners in Lunacy for the State of New York, published by Sherwood & Co., NYC, in 1880.  55pp.  Good copy.  $95

ref:  JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1349

Following an earlier post that I made here on the History of Bad Chairs (including a contrivance made by Declaration-signer Dr. Benjamin Rush that immobilized the body, dulled the senses and kept the feet of its mental-patient-occupant in cold water for "treatment") I'd like to start a short series on bad beds.  This part was excited by another historic psychological/shrinkological tool from the arsenal of doctors who treated the insane: an instrument of torturous treatment called the "Utica crib". 

It was a device used, obviously, to constrain the person placed in it--so that they could be controlled during the day if drugged and still not controllable, and to be used at night if the patient wouldn't stay under their covers.  It looks pretty terrible, a squashed baby bed with a prison door for a top.  It comes as one in a long line of bad beds, including psychiatric hospital"tumbling beds". centrifugal beds, and of course spiked beds of the inquisition, stretching beds form the same, Aushwitz  "beds", and on and on, devices of torture made from places of rest.

The Utica Bed of the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica--if not actually constructed in Utica it was popularized  there--was put into use at about the same time that the facility was opened in 1843.  According to the numerous reports of New York State asylums directors in Supervision of our Asylums for the Insane¹, it was about time (in 1880) that folks in control of the state institutions start to deal with their charges in a medical, treatable, fashion; to try and remedy the effects of mental illness rather than just use the asylums to warehouse societal outcasts.  And it was in this paper that the Utica Crib (and other retraining devices) came under very severe criticism. 

Edward C. Spitzka makes the point that the institutional that use devices like the Utica Crib--which was supposed to prevent patients from injuring themselves--actually had far more incidences of  patient injurious than those institutions which--with a similar clientelle--didn't use them at all.  Spitzka made a very compelling case the the Utica Crib and other devices were archaic remnants of an earlier and darker time in the treatment of cases outside mental health, and they they were far more injurious to patients than not having them at all.  They also, he said, demoralized the staff of the hospital and depressed the medical supervision, making a mockery of treatment. All in all, Spitzka's insights were accurate and prescient. 

Notes:

1.  Report of the Proceedings for Establishing a Board of Commissioners in Lunacy for the State of New York, published by Sherwood & Co., NYC, in 1880.  55pp.

 

Birds with Stone Wings: Athanasius Kircher, 1664

ITEM:  Original engraving from Athanaseus Kircher Mundus Subterreaneus....1664.  14x10".  Very good condition.  $150.

ref:  JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1347

The great semi-mystifying polymath Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) lived for a long time and filled his life with ideas and words,  producing dozens of books during his time on Earth, some of which were never published even though written, some manuscripts lost forever. His was a massive output of extraordinary breadth.  He wasted little time what I can see, writing on a spectacular range of subjects, enlightening people, confusing people, generating great theories and some bad ideas. 

The image below comes from his Mundus Subterraenus ("Athanasii Kircheri Mundus subterraneus in XII libros digestus... "), published in 1664, and which was concerned mainly with geology and the theory of the Earth.  Kircher a product of the great Jesuit institution, the Collegio Romano, postulated the structure of the interior of the Earth, the origin of heat, the source of the tides, the composition of light, mechanics, the structure of music, linguistics, astronomy, and of course the existence of the Virgin Mary in amber.  There was also a fair amount of work on one of his side interests that populated a number of his works, alchemy and the search for the organization of materials.

But what I am looking at today with Kircher is the Mary-in-Amber part, his investigations (and theorizing, and documentation) on naturally-appearing, organic objects found in inorganic material--rocks and minerals--like these birds:

Which is a detail from  

The engraving, entitled Figure Volucrum, quas Natura in lapidibus depinxit, ex variis Museia decerpt et aliunde transmissa (or "Figures of winged creatures, painted by nature on stones, taken from various museums, and otherwise transmitted.") shows Kircher's collection of anthropomorphically based inorganic items.  It is a remarkable exercise to try and place yourself within the context of the scientific world of Kircher's time, 350 years ago, and try to explain these naturally-occurring phenomena, without even the benefits of the conception of long geologic time, or of expanded time in general. 

The descriptive text (at the bottom of the engraving) from Kircher on these objects is translated, as follows:

1.  The first figure represents a head of a Stork, together with some, but I do not know what, quadruped. At the top is something like a human face. Extracted from Aldobrandinot (see PI. XXIII. Fig. 1).
2.  Shows various forms and parts of animals, winged creatures as well as quadrupeds, although very imperfect, the cause of which we give in the physical examinations (see PI. XXIII. Fig. 2).
3.  Represents the figures of two birds expressed by nature on marble in the church of St. George's, at Venice, referred to by Ambrosinua (see Vol. VII. PI. II. Figs. 3, 4).
4.  Shows the head of an Owl, surrounded by rudiments of other birds (see PI. XXIV. Fig. 2).
5.  Represents the figure of a Wagtail, or as others prefer, of a Peacock (PI. XXIV. Fig. 3).
6.  Shows the figure of a monstrous bird (Vol. VII. PI. II. Fig. 4).
7.  The figure of a Merle (Vol. VII. PI. II. Fig. 5).

A closer look at the image:

 

 

SuperBad Ideas: Superhighway Through the Center of Washington D.C., ca. 1925

ITEM: Map--Six Way Motorway. 20x13 inches.  Tri-fold map.  Printed ca. 1925.  Origin unknown. Very good condition. $125

ref:  JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1346    

"A Paved United States in Our Day"

If the planners of this highway had a crystal ball to see deep into the future--say, 1955--they would have been horrified to see the errors in their ways.  The equivalent of this plan might be something like picking up the Beltway, straightening it out, and running it  through D.C. along 16th street, with massive flyovers for the White House and other associated et ceteras.  This idea was published in an odd source, published by the Pennsylvania Railway Company/Lee Highway Association/National Highway Association auspices and the Hudson River Bridge and Terminal Association in about 1925, or thereabouts, just prior to the construction of the George Washington Bridge in NYC.  

 

The plan was for a six lane ("six-way") motorway from New  York to Washington, starting with the Lee Highway (or King's Highway, Route 1, one of the south's oldest roads, and part of what was supposed to be a national autotrail connecting New York with San Francisco) and taking that highway across the proposed Arlington Bridge (called Lincoln-Lee here, without irony), up New York Avenue to the ellipse, rounding the White House, going down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, and then out again to Baltimore and NYC.  Another version called for the highway to go across Key Bridge, dumping everything in Georgetown, hooking right on M Street to Pennsylvania and on out again.  Having lived in D.C.(with my store in Georgetown) for 29 years, I can say without fear of ____  that this would ave been a massively bad idea then and in every decade since then, and probably would have been removed by 1960 just to recognize and correct the sheer, overwhelming badness of its conception.

 The Memorial Bridge wound up being pretty close to this design--lacking the statuary, especially--and is quite a beautiful thing, especially when the designs for its rivals were considered.  The bridges in DC are almost all lovely, or at least those built before 1950. 

 

 

 

Fantastic Contrivances of Massive and Unneeded Difficulty--Bikes in War, 1897

ITEM:  cover from Scientific American Supplement, June 26, 1897.  14x10 inches.  $125.00

ref: JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1345

  

When I see images like this, I can feel a symphony of bad ideas rattling  my bones.

Of contrivances great and unnecessary,  that of bringing the bicycle into the field of war--banking on a fabulous interest in the machine and riding a wave of enthusiasms enjoyed by millions--is among the loftiest of lofty unnecessaries of the past 150 years or so. When these pictures were published in 1897 interest in the bicycle was shattering; it was a popular conveyance, and then in just two or three years, an explosion:  millions of people suddenly needed one.  Bikes seemed to be everywhere,  which forced people to imagine new and different uses for the machine.  And so the Austrian army came up with a plan to include the bike in its plans of war, and it proved to be as about as useful as a double-decker horse.  And just like that--poof--the fragility of the bike's expansive uses fell right off the table, along with the popular interest in it, which by the turn of the century saw the millions who had turned towards the bike turn away. 

It is difficult to image a more unpleasant (real) use for the bike than this.  The pictures seem as though they are part of a Monty Python montage, but they were indeed deadly serious--though I do need to credit someone, anyone, who came up with the idea of a folding bike to make it slightly more transportable.  (Overall though it seems almost as useful as a folding tuba.  Or sousaphone.)  If employed I think the idea would've proved to be more deadly to the biker than whomever the biker was attacking.  Or, more likely, fleeing.

One can only shudder and what it must've been like, sitting on top of that fence, handing bikes (with lights and horns) from one side to the other, bullets flying, attempting an attack with 75 pounds of cumbersome trouble slapped to your side.  It must have felt insane.

   

I think these men would have heard the music too as they slogged their ways through brush and trees and muck and the like, sliding their bikes along that log to keep them dry while the men stood in the wet. They would've heard the music too, a short little symphony played on folded instruments, which sounded as bad as it looked.

Great Maps Department: Nationalities of Manhattan, 1894.

ITEM:  Map of the Population Density and Distribution. $125.00

ref:  JF Ptak Science Books    Post 1343

Frederick Erastus Pierce (1878-1935), is the creator of  The Tenement-House Committee Maps, with two maps on one sheet, showing the densities of Manhattan populations (on top) and the distribution of nationalities (at bottom) which was published in Harper's Weekly for 1894..¹ [Please note--the images I've used for the post here are those for the copy at the Library of Congress.  My copy is actually a little nicer than these; I've used the LC images because the  map is just too big for the scanner.] 

Text on verso:

There's a significant amount of crowded, complex information exhibited here, some somewhat more successfully than others.  The population density map is pretty straightforward.  The distribution of nationalities, however, is another story--there are eleven groups followed here, each given a bit of a confusing flavor, given that the representations are done in black-and-white.  Its difficult data to present, especially considering that the groups shown could vary block-to-block, and that the population of Manhattan at the 1890 showed 76% with foreign-born mothers and 40+% of the city foreign-born themselves.  (It should be noted that only the groups with 2/3 of the base of any particular zone has bene plotted.)

Detail of bottom map:

Much of this population--a good chunk of the city's 1.9 million people--were housed in tenements, a pre-high-rise pre-elevator version of the highrise.  They were six or seven story walk-up buildings that were narrow (usually about 25-35 wide) and long (100-125+ as an average). There were 10-14 rooms per floor, and were generally packed with families.  A massive expose on the tenement house was photographically depicted in "The Tenement House Exhibition of 1899", the un-pretty picture described below by Lawrence Veiller in Charities Review   in 1901: 

"It has shown, step by step, the different changes that have taken place in New York tenement houses, and by means of 1,000 photographs has illustrated nearly all the evils of the present tenement-house system. Special emphasis has been laid upon the terrible evils of the dark, unventilated airshafts, which are the chief characteristic of the present type of buildings. There are over forty-four thousand tenement houses in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx, and in the year 1899 about two thousand new tenement houses were erected. These, as a rule, are built on lots twenty-five feet wide by one hundred feet deep, and are planned to accommodate four families on a floor. The buildings are six or seven stories high, and each floor generally contains fourteen different rooms."

"Only four of these rooms on each floor have direct light and air from the street or the small yard. The other ten open on a narrow "air-shaft,"which is a well hole closed at both ends, seldom more than five feet wide, when between two buildings, and often only two feet six inches wide, varying in length from forty to sixty feet, and being generally from sixty to seventy-two feet high."

"The first of the accompanying illustrations represent a typical airshaft. As usual, it is closed at both ends. It is two feet ten inches wide, forty-eight feet long, and seventy-two feet high. Forty-two windows open upon it, the sole source of light and air to the rooms. Rents in this building run from$10 a month for three rooms to $17 for four rooms. The baby's bathtub is hung out of the window because the rooms are so small that there is no place to keep it inside. The shaft is only a little wider than the tub."--Charities Review, 10 (1900-1901), 19-25.

Mr. Pierce did a commendable job in exhibiting some difficult quantitative stats in a fairly restrictive medium. 

Notes:

1.  The map[ sections are entitled: No. 1. Map of City of New York showing densities of population in the several sanitary districts, June 1, 1894 . And No. 2. Map of City of New York showing the distribution of Principal nationalities by sanitary districts.  On verso: text, two smaller maps "Map of the of City of New York", showing density of population by wards, and then an unrelated but interesting  A bird's-eye view of the Cotton States and International Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia; image of C.A. Collier, President and Director-General of the International Cotton State Exposition.  2 maps : on 1 sheet ; 14 x 48 cm. and 17 x 48 cm.

Mathematicians and Good, Solid Writing: Examples from the 1940's and 1960's

ITEMS:

Includes 26 typed letters signed by Herbert Simon (1951), Karl Menger (1963), W. Edwards Deming (1948), S.S. Wilks (x2, 1948+1962), H. H. Goldstine (1962), A.H.. Taub (x2, 1961),W.G. Cohcran (1947),  Roe Goodman (1948), S.K. Berberian (x2, 1967), A. Eerdelyi (1949),  R.S. Underwood (1953), Arthur Bowley (1948), George Snedecor (1948),  W.T. Federer (1948), Amos Kendall (x3, 1949), TA Bancroft (1949), C.W. Dunnett (x2, 1969), Ted Bancroft (1954), Gertrude Cox (1948), Stuart Rideout (1954), Oscar Kempthorne (1949).

As below:

Proust Suits and Pressurized Cabins

ITEM:  illustrated sheet from the Illustrated London News, ctober, 1936.  13x9 inches.  $35

Ref:  JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1341
If I put my literary specs on and do a little free-association,  what I see in these two figures is a Proustian thing, characters in search of time, freezing time, preserving it. Time, and everything else, everything that can be associated with a human experience captured and recaptured, recirculated, resuscitated, replayed, re-envisioned, remembered, recognized, over and over again.  Kind of like a memory hell, in a way, only in Proust's hands it all sounds and tastes so beautiful. Another peek without those wicked nega-specs and I see two robots from a pulsing Disney film, actions in search of characters--the possibilities are endless, particularly if you develop a little narrative. The real story of what is happening here is complex version of a simpler solution.  And the key to it all: hypoxia.

When this image was published in the Illustrated London News in October 1936 the practical application of tropospheric flight was just about a reality.  I should really say “popular” more so than “practical”.  It presented two approaches to a looming problem in the progress of aviation–reaching altitudes in excess of 10,000 feet presented a host of problems to the passenger of that aircraft.  The solution was to combat the pressures of high altitude flight, one of which was to pressurize each passenger and crew member in their own “space suit”.  The combination of the artist G.H. Davis and the technical assistant compared this solution to the problem with a more simple and elegant solution. 

And that was relatively simple, at least in thought experiments: rather than pressure everyone individually, you could place everyone in a pressurized environment within the aircraft.  And this is the point that the artist/techie make–earlier engineers came up with simple solutions to traveling at high altitudes–they just weren’t simple enough.  And compared with the better design, the initial, simple, designs look a little monstrous.
                               
Notes:

I include Mr. Davis as an iconic figure in the history of 20th century technical illustration–he has been featured on this blog many times.

The pre-pre-Internet? The SAGE Defense System, 1959-1983

Quality Control of America's Anti-Bomber Defensive "Shield": the SAGE System, 1958

ITEM:  Luster, P(eter) K.  Quality Control of a Large-Scale, Real-Time Program System. Dated 7 August 1958. 11x8 inches. First page is an onionskin carbon of an abstract for the paper, followed by 11 sheets of offset, double-spaced text, with numerous author's corrections and additions.  About 3,500 words, total. RARE.  Unlocated.   $1750.00

The SAGE  (The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) was an "air traffic control device" that was used to detect enemy aircraft, relate their position and speed to interceptors which would destroy the threat.  It was basically the air defense shield against attack of North America by Soviet bombers (in the pre-ICBM days of MAD). The MIT/IBM SAGE system was enormously important in the history of computing because of its many real-time, interactive and online aspects--it was an enormously successful and futuristic system, one of the "best" computers ever built.

Luster (who at one time worked for a contractor in Arlington, Virginia, named the John D. Kettelle Corp) was one of hundreds of programmers who worked on the system, and in this case, for this effort of his, he looked at various ways for selecting the proper way for a SAGE to monitor itself in real time and make assessments of its own reliability.  This was a very tricky bit, of course.  SAGE was the largest computer ever built–it had 23 installations in the U.S. (And one other in Canada) each given the possibility of tracking about 400 aircraft at one time.  SAGE would track these developments, coordinate all efforts in response, and then if the flights were determined to be hostile /Soviet forces, would destroy the buggers with responses from “nuclear tipped” BOMARC and Nike missiles. (The Boeing Michigan Aeronautical Research Center and Nike missiles each carried a 1-5 kiloton warhead, enough so that if it was near its target it would be able to destroy it.The BOMARC looked like a jet aircraft; the Nike looked like a multi-finned, very sleek ultimate 1950's imaginatively-styled rocket ship, but real.) Trying to insure that the system was accurate was a major consideration.

From Luster’s  paper:

"It has been necessary to device tests of the quality of the SAGE computer program in order to ensure its acceptability prior to installation and operation...also to run it "live" in order to give an immediate indication of any degradation of the overall system.  In effect, allow the SAGE computer itself to decide the quality of the SAGE computer program...The discussion here is limited to examining the nature of the problem to which such techniques are to be applied, and showing how the application may be made most effectively."

The SAGE system was of course functional, highly reliable, and ws used until 1983.  IT was a kind of early version of the Star Wars defense system envisioned by President Reqgana nd Edward Teller, among others.  Except that SAGE existed and worked.

It is interesting too to think of it in terms of a sort of pre-ARPANET pre-internet, a pre-pre-internet, in that the system has 24 remote nodes which communicated among themselves.  It doesn’t bear much resemblance to J.C.R. Licklider’s  Memorandum For Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network (1963)–the true first modeling suggestion for a working internet in which all of the main pieces of the internet are present, but it is at least in the neighborhood, as SAGE was the first operational nation-wide real-time computer network. ( It should also be pointed out that Licklider and other of the creators of ARPANET were programmers for SAGE.)  SAGE was in-place by 1959 and operating by 1963, but it had severe limitations as a national defense shield and was ill-equipped to counter ICBMs and SLBMs, but it was kept alive until 1983.   

 

American Aid Station, Venice, 1918

ITEM: Western News Service photograph, 9x6 inches, 1918. $125

Ref: JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1340

This is a photograph of an American aid distribution center established in Venice, an action as a direct result of the recent invasion by Autro-German forces.  The Venetians look remarkably composed. 

And the aid workers:

Elsewhere in this blog I've written a short paragraph on the casualties of WWI--Italy suffered 3.48% of its total population being wounded or killed, including over 650,000 civilian casualties.   1

Note

The U.S. lost .13%  of its population to casualties (125,000 killed and 205,000 wounded) during the war--a war which by the time America got here had already been visciously fought for three years, costing dozens of millions of lives.  The figures for everyone else weren't nearly so "fortunate" as the U.S.:  New Zealand's 18,000/41,312 killed/wounded amounted to 1.6% of its population.  The U.K. lost 2.19% (964,000/1,663,000), Italy was 3.48% (650,000/953,000 plus 650,000 civilian casualties), while France suffered a 4.29% (1.4 million/4.27 mil) blow of its total population to war.  Things were worse on the other side:  Germany 3.82% (2 mil/2.4 mil plus 426,000 civilian deaths, and the Ottoman Empire 12% (400,000/771,000 plus 2.1 million civilian deaths.   Worst of all was the Ally  Serbia, suffering a catastrophic 16% loss of its population to war, including 275,000/725,000 plus 426,000 civilian casualties.  As gruesome as the numbers were, the Americans felt only a small percentage of the total sting of war--by 11 November, more than 21 million soldiers would have been wounded, with 9.7 million soldiers and 6.8 million civilians killed.  It was an enormous price