Books offered by JF Ptak Science Books

An Early and Significant Paper in the History of Information Theory: on the Theory of Governors

Wischnegradsky, J [Vyshnegradskii, I. A.] . Sur la theorie generale des regulateurs. In:  Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences de Paris, Vol. 83, 1876,  p.318-320,  (translated here:  On the General Theory of Governors).  Very nice copy, the weekly issue removed from the larger bound volume.  $225

In modelling a steam engine with a centrifugal governor, Vyshnegradskii neglected Coulomb friction and linearised the system about an operating point. Unaware of the work of Maxwell and Routh from 1868 onwards, he investigated the conditions for the onset of 'hunting' (instability). Treating the engine as an integrator, and the governor as a second-order system, he made an ingenious change of variables in order to transform the resulting third-order characteristic equation into the form

        φ³ + xφ² + yφ + 1 = 0

the nature of whose roots determines the general form of the system transient response.

The parameters x and y, which depend on such system characteristics as governor restoring-force constant, moment of inertia, and so on, became known in the Russian and German literature as the Vyshnegradskii parameters. The transformed equation lent itself perfectly to a graphical technique of stability analysis, which the Zürich-based engineer A. B. Stodola later used in his work on hydraulic turbine control; as a result he prompted Adolf Hurwitz to develop his celebrated version of a general stability criterion. --Classic Papers in Information Theory, the Open University, here.

Book Catalog, 2012: the Sciences. Version 1.1 150 items.

JF Ptak Science Books

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Abrikosov,  A(lexi) A.  Methods of Quantum Field Theory in Statistical Physics.  Englewood Cliffs, NJ:  Prentice-Hall,  1963.  1st English.  Very fine condition.  Fine dust jacket.  Alexi A. Abrikosov received the Nobel for physics in 2003; this is a glorious copy of his important book.  $135

Aharoni,  J..  The Special Theory of Relativity.  Oxford,  1959.  1st edition.  8vo.  Blue cloth.  Fine condition.  Fine dust jacket.  Fine copy in the scarce dustjscket.   $100

Akhiezer,  A.I..  Quantum Electrodynamics.  New York:  John WIley, Interscience,  1965.  Revised.  868pp  8vo.  Cloth.  Fine condition.  Fine dust jacket.  $100

 Alt, Franz.  "Bell Telephone Laboratories Computing Machine--I+II."  Washington DC:  National Research Council,  1948.  1st edition.  Mathematical Tables and other Aids to Computation, III/21  Original printed wrappers.  Very good condition.  $750.00

Rare, Early Development Papers for the Creation and Editing of ASCII, 1963/4

Manuscript notes (four pieces) and related support publications (fourteen pieces) on the development of ASCII (the backbone of electronic communications) from one of the 70 members of the main (designated "X3.2") development team. Ralph Mullendore¹, the former engineer at the U.S. Census Bureau responsible for (among many other things) the testing, performance, evaluation and installation of the UNIVAC I at the Bureau.  It looks to me as though Mullendore was a team member in general (the sub-committee X3.2) and a member of the development task group of for punch card standards and ASCII ("X3.2.3"), for "representations of ASCII in punched form" as well as X3.2.1.

All together:  18 items, all of which measures 11 x 8.5 inches.  All are in very good condition.

 

Obfuscation as a Weapon--Teaching Indians how to Read, 1875

ITEM:  Easy Reading Lessons for Indian Schools, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1875.  9x5 inches, 80pp.  Numerous small illustration throughout the book.  Nice condition.  $125

ref:  JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1417 

This small pamphlet, Easy Reading Lessons for Indian Schools, was published for the Department of Indian Affairs (as a section of the Interior Department, classifying the Indian along the lines of cattle and agriculture) by the federal government, printed by the indomitable Government Printing Office in Washington DC in 1875.

It is an unintentionally quiet indicator of the general American policy towards the Native American in the 19^th century.  The work is indifferent to any particular need of the student.  It is intended for the person who could not read, and nowhere in this work is there a listing of the alphabet.  It is ignominiously but softly complex, and looks to me to be a total disaster as a text.  (This is true when comparing the work to nothing at all; but when you stand it next to, say, McGuffey’s reader or the Eclectic or any of the other classic how-to-read books of the 19^th century, the weaknesses of the Indian book become instantly clear.

How in the name of great bog could anyone have thought it just and fair and equitable to teach English-illiterate “Indians” to read with such an instructional?  It isn’t even close to being a book, and it comes no where near to being able to transcend its own terminal obliqueness.  It introduces simple words and phrases in a tongue-twisting ways, and then complicates the situation by quickly adding more structured words in a more confusing environment.  The thing is terrifying.  I actually had a hard time reading it out loud. 

Here on page 17 (already!) is a tremulous example:

“See the lad.  Is it Mat?  It is Mat; and Fan is by him on the sod.  He has his hat. But it is not on. Has Fan a hat?  Mat has a bat. Dan cut it by the bog. Mat had his bat, and ran at my dog Boz., and sat on a log, and hit him.  He did it in fun. And Boz had his fun.  He got the bat and ran it way and hid it in a box. Dan got it but bid Mat not hit the dog.”

For crying out loud! (The bat by the way is, yes, a baseball bat.  Pretty early stuff in 1875.)  Why would someone use this series of images to teach someone how to read?  The pamphlet continues to exhaustion, taking only 80 pages to do so. For me it is a perfect symbol of the way in which the government—in general—dealt with the “Indian Problem”.  Confusing children and making life more needlessly complex, making it harder for them to succeed, making it more difficult for them to rise above the difficult situation that they have unexpectedly been born into,  is a superior sign of inferiority of the dominant power. 

Wait a minute.  Am I writing about the Indian in 1875 or the poor kids in  SE DC in 2009?  I can’t tell.  The corruption of the social model for caring for people who need federal attention more than anyone else—the underprivileged child—is antiquarian and entrenched and as strong as ever.  At least there’s a moral foundation for the care of kids whose parents cannot afford health insurance.  Um, oh, wait another minute….

Franz Alt and the Bell Telephone Labs Computer, 1948

Alt,  Franz.  A Bell Telephone Laboratories Computing Machine--I+II.  Washington DC:  National Research Council,  1948.  1st edition.  Mathematical Tables and other Aids to Computation, volumes III/21  Original printed wrappers.  Very good condition.  We offer the two issues of MTAC in its scrarce original wrappers, with the complete article by Dr. Alt occupying pp 1-13 and 69-84.

SCARCE. "Between 1937 and 1946 engineers and scientists at Bell Telephone Laboratories built a number of digital relay computers, among the first working programmable machines anywhere. Their experience with the technology of switching-that second aspect of telephony-was the basis for Bell's entry into digital computing. But the first aspect-the transmission of analog voice signals-played a role too, as we shall see. The invention of the computer at Bell Laboratories, like its invention elsewhere, resulted from a convergence of technical skill, social need, and talent. Those preconditions were there by the mid-1930's. It remained for one of Bell's employees, Dr. George Stibitz, to serve as the catalyst to bring them together."--from  Reckoners, Bell Labs, page 0074. 

On Franz Alt: "Dr. Franz L. Alt (born 1910 in Vienna, Austria) is an Austrian born American mathematician who made major contributions to computer science in its early days. Franz Alt grew up in Austria and received a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Vienna in 1932, researching set-theoretic topology and logical foundations of geometry. He left Austria for the United States after the 1938 Anschluss. An avid skier, he served in the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division during World War II reaching the rank of Second Lieutenant. After the war, he worked on the ENIAC and other Army computing projects; later he worked in the Computing Laboratory of the National Bureau of Standards, and eventually at the American Institute of Physics. He is best known as one of the founders of the Association for Computing Machinery, having served as its president from 1950 to 1952; he also wrote one of the first books on digital computers, Electronic Digital Computers (Academic Press, 1958)."   (Book ID 22907) $750.00

The Mark I Computer, Manchester, 1949

"A Calculating Machine with a 'Memory': thew Control Panel, and a Storage Tube in Use".  Article in the Illustrated London News for 25 June, 1949, featuring the great, first-programmable computer, the Mark I, at the University of Manchester.  The article appears on the front page of the magazine and is continued in a wide centerfold spread, showing a two-page photograph of the machine.  13x10 inches, 24pp (the whole issue).  Nice copy.  Uncommon.  $650

"The Manchester Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculating Machine has been devised and constructed to undertake a wide variety of complex calculations which would take human beings, using ordinary methods, possibly months to carry out, where the machine takes only an our or so. The human controller has to decide how to Calculating Machine can perform the desired calculation, and draws up a list of "instructions" for it to obey. He breaks up the complex calculation into a series of simple basic operations and translates these from numbers into a specified code. The list of "instructions" is fed into the machine, and the initial numbers (in code) on which it is to operate are then loaded into a special position. All the information having been fed into the Calculating Machine, its "memory" can be switched on to start operations. When the machine has worked out the whole problem, a red light switches on and it stops automatically. The final result can then be read off the monitor cathode-ray tube (shown in our photograph) in the form of light dots which are translated into figures by the human controller. A photograph of the complete apparatus appears elsewhere in this issue."

Eckert's Popular Treatment on How a Computer Works, 1948

Eckert, Wallace J.  "Electrons and Computation".  In:  The Scientific Monthly, November 1948.  Occupies pp 314-323, including one full-page photo of the IBM SSEC, a half-page photo of the arithmetic unit of the SSEC, and a number of other, smaller images.  Offered in the bound volume for July-December, 1948, 448pp.  All  six issues have their original wrappers bound in.  Very nice copy, with a few ex-library marks here and there.  $350

Deep, Wooden Genetics of the Programmable Computer: the Jacquard Loom, 1888

Emanuel Anthony Posselt  The jacquard machine :  analyzed and explained : with an appendix on the preparation of jacquard cards, and practical hints to learners of jacquard designing.  10x7.5 inches, 127,  p., [2] folded leaves of plates : ill. ; 29 cm.  $1650.  Rare first edition. Published under the auspices of the School [Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art] in Philadelphia, 1888.  Of particular interest is the appendix, "Preparing Jacquard Cards", pp 85-102, which in effect is a description of an 18th century programmable machine. 

“Extremely detaiuled description…of machines for preparing Jacquard cards, lavishly illustrated”—Randell, p. 501. (In:  Brian Randell, The Computer from Pascal to von Neuman, 2^nd edition, 1992). 

“Particularly useful for understanding how the cards were used, often considered as an early form of machine programming”. –Cortada, #330.  In:  James W. Cortada, Before the Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand and the Industry They Created, 1865-1956.  Princeton University Press, 1999. 

Biographical Data for Posselt, published in 1900

     Author and textile expert. Born Reichenberg, Austria August 21, 1858. Son of

Emanuel Anthony and Elizabeth (Demuth) Posselt.  Graduated in 1876 from the Imperial Government Weaving Schoolof  Reichenberg. Next managed his father’s mills in Reichenberg, where he got his  first practical experience in textile manufacturing. Visited most important cities  in Europe carrying on the manufacture of textiles.  Came to the United States August 14, 1878. From that time until 1884 he was employed as a designer or supervisor in leading mills in the New England States and Pennsylvania.  In 1884 he became the first director of the first successful textile school in the  United States, started in Philadelphia in connection with the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art.  . In 1891, he resigned his position and accepted editorship of the Textile Record of North America, as of 1900 the foremost journal on textile manufacturing in the United States.  At this time he established a private textile school as well as a book businessin textile literature. His first published work was The Jacquard Machine (4 editions as of 1900). His next and most important publication was The Technology of Textile Design (7 editions as of 1900), followed by The Structure of Fibres, Yarns and Fabrics. He also published Textile Calculations and Textile Machinery. He also published in the United States such valuable works as Wool Dyeing by Professor Gardner (written in England).  He was editor for the textile department in Funk & Wagnalls’ Standard Dictionary and numerous other works. His books are the standard authorities in this country on the subjects which they treat, and have equal status in England, where they have been republished.

See the full-text pdf version of the work at:

• The Jacquard Machine Analyzed and Explained (1888) by Emanuel Anthony Posselt   http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/books/pea_jacq_1.pdf

From the library of Senator John Pastore (D-RI), (1904-1997), the first Italian-American elected to the US Senate (1950).   Bound in a workman’s blue buckram—not a pretty binding by any stretch—though internally in nice condition.  The binding is functional though this is a fine candidate for a nice rebinding. 

"This extensively illustrated work is the most detailed published account of the design and operation of the Jacquard loom, on which Jacquard himself appears to have never published any details. It includes an excellent description of the punched cards. The book includes a brief history of the Jacquard loom, a detailed description of its mechanism and an appendix on the preparation and stamping of Jacquard cards, illustrated with pictures of the stamping machines. The punched card method of storing and processing data evolved from methods developed by textile manufacturers in the 18th and 19th centuries for weaving complex patterns in cloth." Origins of Cyberspace 355. 

The Computer Issue, 1953

The article disucussed here occupies the following part of the mammoth 1200pp (and twelve-pound) half-yearly issue of the Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, 1953 [1A]-80a [advertisements], [2-table contents], 1219-1568, 81a-192a [ads] pages, Volume 41, October 1953, No. 10.  Very nice condition, bound in cloth. $350  The issue contains 41 articles on the leading edge of electronic computing knowledge, including works by Claude Shannon, Grace Hopper, John Mauchly, Wilkes, Eckert and many others. Some of the most significant include:

Buchholz, Werner. "The system design of the IBM Type 701 computer" (describing the overall system design of IBM’s first electronic digital computer).

Burks, Arthur and Wright, Jesse B. "Theory of logical nets".

Elbourn & Witt, "Dynamic Circuit Techniques Used in SEAC and DYSEAC".

Frizzell, Clarence E. "Engineering description of the IBM Type 701 computer

Greenwald, Sidney; Haueter, R. C.; and Alexander, S. N. "SEAC".

Hopper, Grace and Mauchly, John. "Influence of programming technique on the design of computers".

Huskey, Ambrose and Yowell, "The SWAC design features and operating experience".

Palevsky, "The Design of the Bendix Digital Differential Analyzer".

Samuel, Computing Bit by Bit or Digital Computers Made Easy".

Shannon, Claude. "Computers and Automata".

Shannon and Moore, Edward F. "Machine aid for switching circuit design".

Wilkes," Can Machines Think?"

Among the machines described here include the Remington Rand Type 409-2 Electronic Computer; The System Design of the IBM Type 701 Computer; Engineering Description of the IBM Type 701 Computer; The Arithmetic Element of the IBM Type 701 Computer; The SWAC - design features and operating experience; SEAC; Electronic Circuits of the NAREC Computer; A Myriabit Magnetic Core Matrix Memory; A Survey of Analog-to-Digital Converters, and more.

Information Theory, 1951

Cherry, Colin. "A History of the Theory of Communication."  Offprint:  the Proceedings of the Institution of ELectrical Engineers.  Vol 98, part III,No 55, September 1951.  11x8 inches.  Page 383-393.  Densely printed in double columns.  Signed "with compliments" by Colin Cherry.  Scarce in this format.  $95

I will always remember Cherry (1914-1979) not so much for being a leading cognitive scientist whose work spilled across many discipline boundaries, but for his dedicating his magnum opus, The Theory of Human Communication, "to my dog Pym".  (A story is told of Isaac Newton's dog, Diamond, destroying one of his manuscripts; another has Diamond writing two theorems before lunch one day, 'tho one had mistakes, and the other was wholly wrong.)