Ptak Science Books

The Big Lonesome: Masterpieces of Architectural Loneliness--Elevated Roadways

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 994

[This post part of a long and continuing series on Blank, Missing and Empty Things, #54]

If Edward Hopper was a practicing member of the American Institute of Steel Construction and was a civil engineer, he may have rendered his creations much in the same curious way as  those seen below.  I found these designs in an obscure publication, Prize Designs Submitted in the Elevated Highway Competition for 1938, and I found them to be utterly fantastic, lost bits of artistic expression and strong emotion sucked into a vortex of automotive steel and concrete.  They are just superb examples of found art that seems to play utterly against the purpose of the object, and do seem masterpieces in an unusual (and instantly-created) genre of "Unintentionally Cross-Expressive Art".  They have a feel of Outsidery-Edwardy-Hoppery to them--they feel cold, a wet chill, with a coppery audio quality to them...images that make you want to go home and sit in a comfortable chair.

 

And not only are they lonesome; they are also foreboding:

Magnificent! And all once hidden away, but no longer.

Primitive De Luxe versus Civilized No Lux

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 992

I’m not sure exactly what Solomon Butcher told his subjects when he photographed them outside of their frontier houses out there in the Great Plains in the 1880’s.  His spectacular portraits included not only the family of the house, but in many cases, everything that the family owned.  Possessions were an

encumbrance making your way across the country in the mid/19^th century, especially if you didn’t have very many to begin with.  These families—the first generation in their mostly sod-built houses—would’ve been farmers scratching out a minimum trade and decent subsistence.   City/town goods would’ve been not-usual in these circumstances, and evidently whatever it was they had of these things wound up outside, displayed around the house and on the roof, when Mr. Butcher arrived in his photographer’s wagon. 

(Who was it, I wonder, who came up with the initial idea of displaying all of the family’s possessions:  did Butcher set out with that idea, or did it happen spontaneously?  I wonder what it was the families thought as Butcher was packing up his equipment, his horse fed, his cameras stowed away, climbing up onto the driver’s bench.  Did they wait until he was a spot on the horizon to put away their things?  Did they gather everything up as Butcher gathered up his own material, or did they just wait for the stranger to disappear before pulling the family back together? Sitting their surrounded by the things that they owned, did these families feel a quiet pride, or were they embarrassed have their pictures made together with their frontier opulence? I suspect that the idea for display did not begin with the families.)

On another part of the luxury spectrum is this floor plan for a “No-Lux Hotel”, a 2x3 metre/room place for folks to stay cheaply/inexpensively.  There were 50  rooms packed into a 36x24 metre footprint,

leaving precious little room for hardly anything else, like hallways (which seem very narrow), stairways (actually a singular, as there is but one) and bathrooms (one with 8 sinks and four toilets per floor). 

The center of the structure seems curiously blank in the top plan.  The bottom one is confounding, a mysterious mystery:  why on earth would there be musical notation written backwards (via “Arabic Notation”) in the center of the plan?  No doubt the architect was on the iconoclastic side to have included such a thing; but its inclusion no doubt meant something to the author, though it is now lost to his/her dust.  Pity. 

“Lusux” is Latin for something like “extravagance”.  “De luxe” appeared in France in 1928 or so for the first time to describe this added opulence in a word of its own, though there is a certain geology to the idea.  A luxury might well be a spice on a camping trip, or a back-up aircraft to the family helicopter.  Perhaps it was an extra sink in a cheap hotel, or a violin for the kids in a house that stood by itself in 10-square-mile solitude. At least the multi-floored Hotel No-Lux had a stairway.

On the Subjugation of Women: a review of some posts

JF Ptak Science Books LLC

I wanted to collect some of the posts on this blog on this subject as it seems as though I really don't have a category for it in the archives...

What Goes into Making Human Robot Girls 

http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2010/01/what-goes-into-making-human-robot-girls-1941.html

First Thing to Do is to Find Some Men:  How to Get a Boy-Date, 1941

http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2010/01/the-first-thing-is-to-find-some-men-how-to-get-a-boydate-1941.html

How to Look Smart, or Pretty, but Not Both

http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/women-history-of/

 Maintaining Women as a Subclass: Major Reinforcements from Minor Non-sequitors

http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2009/10/maintaining-women-as-a-subclass-reinforcements-from-minor-nonsequitors.html

Missing Pieces of Women: Pope Joan and the Proper Girl of the Ladies Home Journal

http://longstreet.typepad.com/.m/thesciencebookstore/2010/01/missing-pieces-of-women-pope-joan-the-proper-girl-of-the-ladies-home-journal.html

How FDR Made Women (1) Nervous and thus (2) Older. An Appeal to Vote Republican, 1936

http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2010/01/how-fdr-made-women-1-nervous-and-thus-2-older-an-appeal-to-vote-republican-1936.html

The Coming Sex War of 1919

http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2010/01/the-coming-sex-war-of-1919.html

 

 

Primer for Londoners on being Bomber by Nazis, July 27, 1940.

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 990

[Also see my The Bombing of Britain in the Illustreite Zeitung, July 1940 post; also here.]

The Battle of Britain was an air battle begun weeks after the surrender of France (22 June 1940) in preparation for the Nazi invasion of England.  Hitler and the High Command believed Britain to be vulnerable², and surrenderable, or at the least could be convinced not to interfere in the rest of the war.  But plans were made for the invasion—an invasion which could only be successful (it was reasoned) if there was complete naval or aerial superiority. The naval part was out of the question, especially since the Nazis had suffered such losses in the Norwegian campaign. The Luftwaffe was another story, and so the operation began. 

The Illustrated London News published this pictorial introduction to Nazi bombing on 27 July 1940, just weeks after the campaign began.  At this point in the war the Luftwaffe operations were delegated to coastal installations and aircraft industries. 

The terror bombing against citizens in cities—which was an idea not born here but rather 20 odd years before—wouldn’t begin for some months.  In the meantime, and at this early part of the campaign against England, the British citizenry was introduced in a very proper way how the bombing was being carried out.  IT really does seem to be to be a very constructive, non-alarmist, cogent distribution of information to the general public about the potential for massive devastation.  

 

Notes:

1. By the summer of 1941 the campaign was largely over, the Nazi effort doomed. England: 1,023 fighters: 376 bombers, 148 coastal command aircraft for a total of 1,547 aircraft and  544 pilots and aircrew killed.  There were also 27,450 civilians killed and 32,138 wounded.  The Germans lost 873 fighters and 1,014 bombers for a total of 1,887 aircraft and  2,500 pilots

2. The plan ‘Directive No. 16; On the Preparation of a Landing Operation against England’ read, in part, as follows:

“Since England, despite its militarily hopeless situation, still has not shown any signs of being prepared to negotiate, I have decided to prepare a landing operation against England and, if necessary, carry it out. The objective of this operation is to eliminate the English home country as a base for the continuation of the war against Germany...”

“Included in these preparations is the bringing about of those preconditions which make a landing in England possible;”

“a) The English air force must have been beaten down to such an extent morally and in fact that it can no longer muster any power of attack worth mentioning against the German crossing…”

Outsider Logic Department: the Fabulous Curative Necessity of Fatty Meats

JF Ptak Science Books LLC    Post 989

[see also my related posts on Women Meat Pioneers and of course Meat String and Curled Hair]

I have a suspicion that the author of Eat Meat for a Successful Life, G.H. Brinkler  (a “N.D.”, doctor of nauturopathy,  from the American School of Naturopathy and the tautologically-surprising “founder” of the “Brinkler Club”) had a compromised and possibly antagonistic personal history with vegetables.  And water, as Mr. Brinkler is also the originator of the “Brinkler Waterless Way to Health”, and a man who claims not to have drunk any water in 35 years. 

Most humans don’t do so well without water after a few days, though there are extreme cases where people have survived for several weeks without water. To have survived 1,820 weeks seems pretty much to be well on its way to being a vastly under-appreciated record of human endurance.

But the main story here of course is the meat, with the waterless bit woven through it like heart-ending marbling in a butt chop.  Meat, as we are told by Mr. Brinkler, is pretty much a “natural fixer” for just about anything.  Lazy in the morning?  A pound of pork on the broiler will cure that.  Sexual inadequacy?  Solved with meat (ingestion).  Poor memory?--the answer:  meat, and lots of it. And not only just meat; it definitely needs to be not lean. Big fatty meats are the greatest source of the desired “muscle food”; lean meats, unfortunately, are only “nerve foods”. Somehow the meat mixed with the waterless way induces the “nerve-ends” into a “more natural” and strengthened existence.

The Brinkler follower should also chew their meat less.  “The masticating fad might result in tiring the jaws and gross undernourishment”.

I could go on and pull further quotes out of context from this piece, but that would be mean. The pamphlet (1934) I have is the U.S. Copyright Deposit copy, and I suspect that there may not have been many copies other than mine. I think that all the man was trying to do was sell broilers. 

"Women are Human, too": Human Resource Workbook for Females, 1943

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 988

In the history of archaic thought it doesn’t take very much at all to reach the uncomfortable bits in the sulfurously tangled history of the subjugation of women. But it is most interesting when you find the points at which the “backward-looking” archaic parts are actually somewhat forward-looking for their time.

Such is the case with this odd and interesting little pamphlet, Women in Men’s Clothing, published by the Vultee Aircraft Corporation, and published in 1943—it can be simultaneously awkward as a broken product of its time and oddly, slightly, futuristic (with a grudging and clawing recognition of women as possible equals as members of the work force).  Overall the publication looks pretty painful from today's perch, but when you look a little past the winces you can see a little bit of recognition for women in general; at least this is far forward from anything that might've been published slightly before the war. 

The pamphlet was intended as a human resources tool for managers and supervisors in an aircraft production facility where women had been sought and recruited to fill the very many vacancies brought on by the war.  (Millions of women entered the workforce for the first time between 1942-1945; millions of them exited too once the servicemen returned from active duty to reclaim their jobs.)  For most industrial supervisors, the prospect of women in the workforce was not a welcomed one, and many had never before needed to think of such a diversified workplace. This slight publication translated the idea of “women/"wimmin” for these men. 

The "translation" of the understanding of women from home to the workforce doesn't go very far to advancing the understanding of women at work--they're pretty much the same (dogmatic, condescending, sexist, domineering).

All of that is pretty well summed up by the first picture in this series--the asterisked "equality" between men and women.  I must admit that I don't think I've ever seen this "equals, but" label before, or at least so deep into the century. 

And of course "women are Human, too" needs very little comment...as is the case for most of the images in the pamphlet.  

 

 
 

 

Propaganda and the Dinner Table: Strike-Breaking and Graphical Display of Data, 1911

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 987

This graphic display of the effects of a  transport workers’ strike is a pretty, well-designed piece of propaganda designed to draw in the general, middle-class (such as it was) and working population into league against the strikers.  At least that’s what it looks like to me: the strangulating effects of food not coming into the port of Liverpool and its attack on the family dining table. Literally, and figuratively: a table, by the way, that appears at the direct center of attention, the bull’s-eye of what is a target, made to look like the transport workers were taking direct aim at the symbol of the family. 

All of what was going on of course was that some hard working people were trying to get a little more money to put food on their own  tables—the facilitators of food distribution for the nation’s people wanting nothing more than a little more food for themselves and their families.  And these were the people, by the way, who did not set a five-utensil place settings with linen table covers and a large fresh bouquet as is oddly the case in the illustration.

By the time this illustration appeared in the Illustrated London News in August 1911 the movement had already been active for a year—there had also been a call to action the month before involving over 100,000 workers.  The National Sailors and Firemen's Union, and the National Union of Ships' Stewards, Cooks, Butchers and Bakers, dockhands, lorry rivers,  general laborers, and on and on, were involved in the strike, which was a bitter and confrontational battle between them, scabs, police, the army, and of course the owners of the means of production and shipping means.

After the battle of greed and need, need won.

The Hidden Death Hammer: Display of Quantitative Data for the Battle of Jutland, 1915.

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 986

A year and two weeks after the end of WWI, the Illustrated London News  published this compelling graphical display comparing the British naval losses at Jutland to three other great sea battles (Camperdown, the Nile and  Trafalgar).  The battle near Jutland (Denmark) was the largest naval engagement of WWI, involving the German Navy’s High Seas Fleet and the Royal Navy Grand Fleet, and took place May 31-June 1, 1915 (“The Day”).  It was an absolutely enormous engagement, with 250 vessels involved (151 for the Royal Navy, 99 for the German).¹

The end result of the battle was mixed and still debated today; neither side could convincingly claim a conclusive victory from the affair.

The Royal Navy losses at Jutland were staggering: 6,094 killed and 570 wounded, with German losses at 2,551 killed and 507 wounded. 

And while this graphical display places Jutland in a weak context with these other battles, and as pleasing as the thing is visually, the larger mark, the great lurking statistical and human beast lurking there in the mix of silhouettes and data, occurs about halfway down the far right column.

Here we see the losses for five ships: the Queen Mary, the Invincible, the Indefatigable, the Defence, and the Black Prince.  Together, some 5066 men served aboard these vessels; at the end June 1, 1915, 5,059 of them would be dead.  Everyone aboard the Indefatigable, Defence and Black Prince would be killed; 1 would survive on the Invincible, and 6 would survive the killing of the Queen Mary. Astonishing, really.  And there are no other numbers like this on this chart.

As certain and as clear as this representation seems, and as straightforward and seemingly elementary as it looks, I was shocked to see the numbers for those five Royal Navy ships, a “hidden” history within a broad comparative analysis. 

Notes:

1. England: 28 battleships, 9 battlecruisers, 8 armoured cruisers, 26 light cruisers, 78 destroyers, 1 minelayer,1 seaplane carrier. Germany: 16 battleships, 5 battlecruisers, 6 pre-dreadnoughts, 11 light cruisers, 61 torpedo boats.

[The Queen Mary going down.]

Imaging Imagination: Diagrams of Humor & the Center of Levity, 1878

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 985 

[Wood-eating woman tells a joke to distract  three men sharing the last chair in creation in alternative chairless dot universe.]

Acerbic and punctilious, this work by an anonymous (Ambrose Bierce-like) late 19th-century cataloger of human-ness attempted to diagramaitcally display the sharing of humor among people.  The resulting images--all unexplained, not indexed, and left to a logical imagination--fit very nicely into a developing section on this blog called  Maps and Diagrams of Imagination and Ideas.

{Woman finger-ingests chair presented to her by knee-connected chair-minions from talking-mustache close-male-pelvis universe.]

In reality this short, small, wordless publication's images looks like  natural philosophy textbook images displaying ideas like momentum and gravity...often they would be quite prosaic, with unnecessary natural accoutrement, little bits of added detail that had nothing really to do with the image displayed. The real intent of this document was to illustrate the center of gravity--it would've been more helpful if the publication had a title page or text of any kind for that matter, but since it doesn't the mind ran free, allowing these representations to be a geometry of shared humor.  Which of course they are not--but the images do have a certain coy funniness to them...

[Woman makes wooden point by stabbing Ear-lobed Mustache Man in the heart with her wooden palm finger.]

Some of the other posts that could be included in this Imagining the Imagination category include:

First photograph of a smell:

Mathematical Thinking being Thought

Map of Nothing:

A Map of Holes in the Sky:  Heaven

Map of Color-Sense Placement

Unexpected Sense Impressions from Antique Prints: Sound

A Map of Comparative Moralities for Women

{How it would be done if men gave birth.]

 

{She is smiling. What do the other expression imply?]

The Fabulous Future: Airmail, 1910

JF Ptak Science Books LLC    Post 984

Seeing this splendid image of 1910's near-future forced a question into mind:  what came first, aerial delivery of mail or aerial delivery of explosives?  I suspected that "mail" would be the correct answer, but didn't know how much deeper that went into the past than the history of aerial bombing.

The first bits of mail were delivered among the first balloon flights ever made--in the U.S., the first quasi-official piece of airmail was a letter from president George Washington that went aloft in the first balloon flight (1793) in this country, deliverable to whomever it was that first came to greet the balloon in wherever it landed.  The first semi-regular delivery of mail in the U.S. was again by balloon, beginning in 1859, which still precedes the first sustained use of explosives dropped from aerial vehicles by five decades.

This image was drawn by H. Janos for the Illustrated London News for 16 January 1909, and shows a futuristic balloon making its way from Dover to Calais with a cargo of mail and a dozen or two passengers (and whatever crew there was besides the captain, presumably belowdeck).  The article reads: "1910 may seem a very early date at which to fix the coming of such vessels, yet aerial navigation is progressing at such a rate that none can call the date impossible". 

And so true;  it didn't take but a few years to begin experimental air service routes for the mails by biplane, and less than a dozen to have instituted long-range flights by heavy aircraft, with the mammoth mail-delivering airships sent to the not-good ideas department. 

In any event I just happen to like this image by Janos--for what was a not-essential piece to the weekly magazine, the man did produce an admirable work, not the least of which is his unusual airborne oblique bird's-eye view to the shoreline.