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Etienne Boullee Images/Picture Dump

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Picture Post//Image Dump

Below area few images of the works of the architect Etienne Boullee.  I've entered quite a few posts on this blog featuring this late 18th century French visionary architect--just see here for a list of these entries. 

Picture Posts--American Photo Series

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Picture Posts

A few images that I've put aside in the America series:  general picture dump. Sorry, but I didn't have any notes with them...

 

WPA Posters in the Sciencess, 1930's.

JF Ptak Science Books LLC   Picture Post

Picture  Dump:  WPA posters in the sciences

Sports Photos, 1890-1940, Mostly Women (Picture Dump)

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Here's a few interesting images I've collected and just want to make a picture post of them.

 

Lonely Man-Rakers in a Dry Lake Bed, 1567

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 1001       

This odd, semi-naïve “outsider-esque” map is found in George Wernher’s (d. 1567)  De admirandis Hungariae aquis hypomnemation depicts an intermittent lake region of the Inner Carniola region of Slovenia—more  precisely it shows the “disappearing” lake of Cirnitz, which is near the town of Otokh.  The map (which is oriented west/east

at top/bottom) I think is showing the lake when it is “disappeared”.  What happens evidently is that when the water table rises it causes the groundwater and underground streams to also rise, seeping through the limestone lake bed and rising through caverns and sink holes; it becomes a periodic lake, though the appearance and disappearance of the water has been the subject of wide mytho-specuilation for the folks who have lived in the region for the last few thousands years.  

The towns of Otokh and Lipsse are shown as walled entities, and according to some old gazetteers that I’ve consulted would actually be surrounded by the lake from time to time.  To further enunciate this the cartographer seems to have included cultivated lands around these towns--no doubt the resulting soil would’ve been rich I nutrients.  Also the eight rivers that feed the lake are shown here, ending at this time in small lakelets. 

Although I liked the feel of this map it is not what attracted me enough to write this post—the main point of interest is at the center of the map.  There, standing to the right of the horse and rider is a man working with a rake. 
These are the only two human figures in the map, and one of them is holding a rake.  Probably the person, along with the horse-and-rider and the small lake-bed bridge across one of the rivers were included to hammer home the point that the lake was gone, and that someone might be farming it. 

In any event, the stick person looks like a lonely figure.

I think that a good dictionary could be compiled of lonely figures like this that appear as “fillers” in maps and prints. These people have made a number of appearances in this blog, such as

in the case of the first photograph of a human being. Well, actually, it is the first photograph that just happens to capture a human in the emulsion. Since the  exposure time was so terribly long for this image to be made, the moving people and horses and carriages on the street, all of the city-life bits, were necessarily spectral, and mostly  invisible, in the photograph.  Only the stationary

items were captured, and the only people captured here were two figures in the foreground, doing something or other (shoe shine?) that made them still for at least five minutes--long enough for their anonymous but famous photonic impressions to be captured.  

Controlling Time & Motion: Visualizing Directions for Human Movement #1.

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 1000

I came to this post backwards. My primary interest was the frontispiece portrait of the author of a 1539 book on wrestling, showing the somewhat long-in-tooth author with scraps of tuffy hair and a coy knowing grin--an unusual portrait, presented by the master Lucas Cranach.  I looked further into the book and discovered that the well-illustrated document pictured varieties of wrestling moves, all demonstrated to students by the author, who most of the time was shown with this knowing grin, gripping and flipping and immobilizing his younger subjects. What slowly came into my head while looking at this book was how concise and instructive the images were, and that the whole was a great tutorial on wrestling motion, and the presentation of instruction on specific motions in general. 

Prior to the invention of photography, printed works on how humans should move in a given way and for a given task are uncommon and, generally, somewhat complex. The image I have in my head is the epochal work of the somewhat forgotten Etienne Marey, who in the 1870's created what was essentially the world's first "slow motion" device¹. One iteration of Marey's apparatus was basically a long series of ganged cameras recording a motion for a simple task at a given time frame and presented on a continuous strip of photographic paper, sort of like a motion picture with the camera speed set at three frames per second. The resulting images were phenomenal and showed people for the first time the exactness of all manners of simple motions--motions that no longer looked so "simple" once all of its aspects could be studied from captured photographic evidence.  Even the act of hopping over a small stool or bending to pick up a bucket of water were enormously revealing in a way like Robert Hooke's Micrographia displayed the great detail and complexity of the seemingly simple fly.  Perhaps the most famous of Marey's series of images was that of a galloping horse, which also for the first time revealed what exactly the horse's legs were doing and proving that almost every painter in the history of art represented the galloping horse incorrectly. But Marey doesn't actually fit the mold of directing the motions of people for a particular instructional purposes, though he does of course photographically reveal hundreds of actions that led to a revolutionary understanding of the body-in-motion.  This is why I've chosen him as the limiting point for this category. (And just for the record I'm not sure when the first book on the movement of animals--not including hunting/trapping books--comes into being.)

Early works directing people on how to move are not terribly common. There are general works on table manners, the appearance at royal courts, religious ceremonies, maneuvers for armies in combat, sword fighting, parades for triumphs and adulations, funeral rites, and so on. 

For this first installment I'd like to look at two ends of the spectrum for displaying motion instructions clearly. The first is a book by Fabian von Auerswald, whose Ringer kunst: funf und Achtzig Stücke², published in 1539 in Wittenberg, is one of the earliest books printed on the art of wrestling.  It was printed by Hans Lufft³,the man who

was also responsible for printing Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible a few years earlier. 

I like the images in this book, elegantly produced by Lucas Cranach--they also present the more-elderly author (frequently shown with a sly grin) demonstrating his wrestling moves to his students. Overall it seems to me that it was an excellent (if not fluid) presentation of how to direct body motions.

Not so quite as direct, or simple, or lucid, or useful, is Raoul Feuillet's publication of Pierre Beauchamp's Orchesography⁴ , a work published first in 1700  (and then in English in 1706) and dedicated to instructing people on the movements of the dance.  It was a good idea, though more useful to folks in the future than for his contemporaries.  The book was a spatial geography of dance--the motion (feet and arms, both) was written in a similar fashion as musical notation, though not nearly as clearly.  The dancer was to hold the book and view the steps as they would be from above, holding the book always (!) pointed towards the "upper end" of the dance room.  (There were separate and complicated instructions showing how this was to be accomplished--imagine trying to perform the steps in a series of twirls, and keeping the book pointed "true north" so to speak.  Not easy.)

As it turns out the work by Feuillet/Beauchamp may have been more important as a piece of dance archaeology because it was so terribly detailed; it may not have been an exemplar of teaching people how to dance, but it certainly was an iconic publication in recording the intricacies of dances that may otherwise have been lost to time. 

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Notes:

1. I should also say that Marey was influenced by the work of Eadweard Muybridge’s photographs of motion—whom he credited of course—and who I think expanded upon and exceeded those achievements.

2. The entire book located here; the translator writing here on the philosophical/linguistic aspects of the book.

3. Beginning in 1534--the Luther Bible was printed in vast numbers by Luftt (and appeared in the millions over the years) and others; the same can not be said of the Auerswald book, which appeared in a small edition and is quite rare today. It was in this edition that (in addition to much else) is found in Romans 3:28 the controversial "alone": "thus, we hold, then, that man is justified without the works of the law to do, alone through faith"

4. The full title:  Orchesography; or, The art of dancing by characters and demonstrative figures. Wherein the whole art is explain'd; with compleat tables of all steps us'd in dancing, and rules for the motions of the arms, &c. Whereby any person (who understands dancing) may of himself learn all manner of dances. Being an exact and just translation from the French of Monsieur Feuillet. By John Weaver, dancing master.

An Enormously Modest Proposal--Toilet Paper as a Social Medium, 1932

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 998

In the days before the well-rubbed catch-phrase "social media" was thunk, and in the days long passed the era of twice-daily postal delivery and four daily editions of newspapers, a man named Henry M. Robinson--writing as "Tish Hugh"-- wrote a small book proposing toilet paper publishing/social interface.

Passing Fancies, published in 1932, extols the virtues of spending "alone time" with a passive interactive medium.  He rues the days that mail order catalogues were replaced by toilet tissue as a medium of cleanliness conveyance, saying something to the effect that a great deal was lost replacing the pages of goods-for-sale with plain whitish tissues.

And so to the rescue of the lonesome and bored goes Mr. Robinson, who suggests that toilet tissue be sold imprinted with newspapers, novels, biographies, historical fiction, and so on.  They would be vertical issues of your favorite reading material, including magazines, everything included--except food advertisements.  Mr. Robinson notes that olfactory memories of reading food advertisements while "actively engaged" could lead to "disastrous"  associations with the advertised product.  

Also suggested in the slim and stubby book's 32 pages:  multiple-rolled bathrooms, with tissue rolls for individual family members according to their interests.  

It is a somewhat interesting proposal, and evidently may very well be among the earliest to suggest a deeper commodification of toilet paper as a delivery system for the written word.  The aspect for earlyness for this idea seems a little shaky, as toilet paper as a mass-produced (and available) item was already at least fifty years old by 1934, but sometimes it takes a long time for something that looks obvious to take effect.  Perhaps it took so long in this case because it wasn't a particularly good idea.

I am positive that Mr. Robinson paid no attention to the critics or reviewers of his work. If so he could always have paraphrased the stout assessment and response made by the musician Max Reger to one of his (harsher) critics: 'I am sitting in the smallest room in my house,'' he wrote, . ''I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me.''

(Earlier in this blog I wrote a post on the most important innovation in the history of the prolongation of human life--the flush toilet.)

People Panoramas

JF Ptak Science Books LLC 

I've made a number of posts here about images-within-images, art found inside art, the increasing discovery as you look more and more closely at a complex scene. . Generally they deal with the inconsequential, ephemeral depictions of people in architectural engravings; tonight it is straight-out people panoramas with an exercise in zooming in to smaller sections of a large mass, and finding new less-vast subsets and their unexpected detail. 

Boxing

Harvard-Yale Football

Miami Swimming Scene, 1925




 
Democratic National Convention for 1928

Republican National Convention 1920

Galveston, 1909

America Co-opts Canadian Flying Saucer Program, 1954.

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 997 

"Fling Saucers" weren't ten years old by the time that John C.M. Frost--an engineer from De Haviland--came up with the idea of re-fitting his swooping-shovel shaped idea for a rocket plane with a saucer-shaped one.  He worked hard on his idea, spending some $400,000 on the project--Canadian.  Frost was in Ontario and working for the government before the government stopped working for him, abandoning the undertaking (called "Project Y") just as the United States became interested in it.  

There are numerous reports around the web on this aircraft, so I'll just provide a couple of starter links here and little commentary.  What I was most intrigued by in this whole affair of producing a 2,500 mph hovercraft was that instead of having a U.S. Air Force star somewhere on the aircraft the thing could've been running around with a red Maple Leaf.  

Don't get me wrong, I love Canada--went to school there, I did--but the idea of a combat-ready flying saucer with the maple leaf on it is just completely, well, wrong. 

The Exploding Dots of Falling Dominoes: Vietnam, 1954

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 996

This story is more about Ho Chi Minh's capture of French silk than about anything else--it is a peep into the future following the end of the French endgame in Vietnam, which came abruptly with their defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

[Detail/larger image below.]

The siege there started on the 13^th of March, and lasted 57 days, until May 7^th, 1954. The commanding general of the Viet Minh forces, Vo Nguy Giap, achieved an enormous victory over the French—the first time a guerrilla force readjusted itself into a conventional force to defeat a Western army. It was the end of the line for the French military involvement there and it just so happened to be the beginning of Vietnam as an object on the American foreign policy event horizon.

 Just a week after this notice appeared, Dwight Eisenhower made his domino speech:

“Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.conference…”

Vietnam was supposed to be one of those dominoes.  Evidently all of the dominoes were the same size regardless of the size or international presence of the country.  It was also the same sort of domino even if had appealed for American recognition of its democracy-laced post-WWII government. And it was a domino still even if the United States had helped fashion the events that necessitated the movement of that country toward domino-hood.  No matter.  The U.S. decided to back the French in reclaiming their war-lost possession, in spite of the fact that the French were still doing business during the war with the Japanese occupying force in Vietnam, and in spite of the fact that the French re-armed Japanese troops to help fight against the "insurgent" forces of Ho Chi Minh.  It was an ugly decision, and I suspect FDR was just too sick to deal with it properly. 

Nine years later, the French had finally been soundly defeated and Vietnam thought that it had finally gained independence.  Not so. 

The picture here is of dots--the field of battle at Dien Bien Phu, littered with silk parachutes--cargo dropped by the French air force to the defenders of the garrison....most of which, evidently, fell well outside the French-controlled perimeter and into the hands of the attacking Vietnamese army.  These were the exploding dots of the falling domino.

 

If these dots stood for something, they could stand for the coming wave of death and misery, a graphical representation of what was to come over the next 25 or so years.

I reckon there to be about 500 parachutes/dots in this picture.
Each of these dots could be assigned a number, each representing a gross statistic for the war, from  1950 to 1975:

U.S. forces killed in action:  100/dot (58,000 killed)

U.S. forces wounded in action: 300/dot  (313,000)

Army of the Republic of Vietnam, killed in action:  500/dot (263,000)

Army of North Vietnam, killed in action:  2,000/dot (1.1 million killed)

Civilian deaths, North & South Vietnam: 4000/dot (2 million killed)

Civilian deaths caused by North Vietnam during the war: 300/dot

Civilian deaths caused by "North" Vietnam, postwar consolidation and reeducation: 1,000/dot

Civilian deaths caused by the U.S.: 175/dot

All deaths for the war, 1950-1975: 8,000/dot (using a figure of 4 million).