JF Ptak Science Books

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

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. (The original pamphlet is available at our blog bookstore.)

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.

 

Contrary Big Crowds Series--a Chaos of Hats and an Order of Heads with No Hats

JF Ptak Science Books--Quick Post

Coming upon this image of a sea of hats, which in the fine tradition of naming collections of self-similar things-like a gaggle of geese or a murder of crows--a 'Chaos" of Hats, I needed to find its contrary, and a relatively orderly and ordinary one at that. [I compiled a list of  oddly-named groups in an earlier post here called An Unkindness of Ravens and a Murder of Crows.]

What better than an Order of Heads?  This image is of a church or social service at Pentonville Prison in 1855.  The penitentiary engraving is real;  but the  truth be told,  the Chaos photo is a manipulated image, about a half of the original of something I made, mainly because I just wanted to see  a very hatty crowd around the man in the middle pointing at the camera. 

As it turns out, Pentonville--serving North London loyally since 1816, and still doing so--was the home for a bit of Oscar Wilde and Boy George.  It was also the place where Arthur Koestler began composing his thoughts for his magnificent Darkness at Noon.

Newspapers and Music in Bedlamia, 1850's.

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1348

Two short tales of attending the needs of the mentally ill in the 19th century:  asylum journals and treatment of mania via music.

In the world of the treatment of the mentally ill, or of the possibly "deranged", or the poor confused, or the old and demented, or the depressed of all ages, there have been some uncommon instances of creativity and rehabilitation in the constrained early days of warehousing patients, or inmates.  One example of this was the newspaper/journal called The Opal, which was published--extraordinarily--for ten years (1851-1860, in ten volumes and 3,000 pages) by the inhabitants of the State Lunatic Asylum of the State of New York at Utica.  This illustration--which is so far as I is (unfortunately!) the only image in the journal and is repeated month-to-month--depicts, I guess, the editor of the journal, in a cell, and with a terrified or manic or at least sharp-eyed thousand-yard gaze.  It is an unusual statement by the artist, perhaps, that the stone wall behind the editor's bars look somewhat like the books bound with raised bands that are on the inside of his cell.  I'm uncertain as to whether this was a message, or whether this picture is just a picture.  But it is certainly odd to draw such a portrait of the editor of The Opal--greasy hair, sunken eyes, mouth ajar, crazy-gaze, and hardly very sympathetic.

And the title page of the journal:

Given the time, it is remarkable that such an enterprise occurred and lasted as long as it did.  It must have been an extraordinary aid to the people in Utica, allowed an avenue to express themselves, allow for creativity, allow for some independence of expressive thought  It was put loud and clear in the volume for 1854, on page one, in a bit called "A Message to Our Patrons": "Forty-eight months [that's four years since the beginning of the journal] have vibrated their moments on the engagements and extensions of the Opalians. The divine art of printing has conveyed through numerous and constant agencies the heraldry of Asylumian intellect, and in the varied developments of society, our paper hath been insinuated by the gentleness of humanity, and reciprocated in a fourfold state the harbingers of progression in kindness by exchanges, whose opening leaves hath borne refreshment from the wines on the lees of humanity, well refined by the studied graces of purity, sense, discretion and knowledge, to the great comfort of this retirement, hallowed by the superintendence of wisdom and virtue¹."

The italicized "our paper" appears int he original. 

And this example of trying to step somewhat beyond the modicum of dispensing agents for settling a "maniac"--a person it seems suffering from a manic stage.  Doctors and attendants tried to treat the patient with an assortment of narcotics, but they didn't work; very liberal applications of btrandy occurred, which caused some sleepiness, but after two days the man woul dbe getting sleepy, anyway.  And then came the desperate measure (so to speak):  music.  It was certainly nothing new, really, the calming effets o fmusic having been know deep into antiquity.  Why it was not mor eliberally applied in mental institutions, I don't know.  The case and description are found in the American Journal of Insanity (later the American Journal of Psychiatry) for 185 8:

"The symptoms indicated, as it seemed, the prompt use of narcotics. Morphine was therefore given in doses gradually increased, till at the end of 48 hours, 3 gr. at a time, with strong laudanum injections, had been administered. This treatment seeming to have little or no effect, was abandoned and other means, such as baths, counter irritants, stimulants, djc &lc, resorted to, with but slight amelioration of the alarming symptoms. The patient had now continued in this state three days and nights, without sleep, and with little or no food. Pulse much of the time 120. Countenance anxious and sunken, presenting every appearance in fact, of approaching final prostration. Of the means above mentioned, the administration of brandy, in often repeated and large doses, seemed to act most favorably and effectually. Under its use the pulse came down to about 100. The patient also became more quiet* and manifested a slight disposition to sleep.

"At this time, it was suggested by the father, that his son had always manifested a remarkable fondness for music, and that when a child, sleep had often been produced by it. A violin player was accordingly sent for, and the effect of his art tested upon the patient, with the most remarkable and immediate favorable effects. The nervous excitement began to abate at the sound of the fiddle, and in a very short time, the patient was in a sound sleep, from which he awoke in an hour or two much refreshed and nearly rational. By continuing the brandy, and when nervous excitement began to manifest itself, an occasional quietus from the fiddle, this singular state of mental excitement was, in a few days, entirely and permanently subdued."

In general, the 1850s were not a good time to be in a mental institution in the United States--or anywhere else for that matter.  There were 3700 people or so institutionalized in America at the time of the two stories (above).  It was really just about at this time that a national effort began to be organized to treat the institutionalized people more as patients than as inmates. 

 

____

Notes:

1. "In the diffusion of thought by the arts, its curiosity and character are enhanced by the manner in which it is communicated; and the respectful interchange of sympathy, and of emotions incident to nature that assimilate and affiliate the multiform interests and conditions of the human kind are so promoted by interchanges as to excite a brotherly regard for the correspondences, and a desire to advance their intelligences anew, when apprehended as the instrumentality of reasonable reliances."

Also this:

		Asylum Life; Or, The Advantages Of A Disadvantage, from The Opal                 Page 1:
1		I have no care for copper or coin, I have no fear of any one’s frown; I’m fed by the hand that feedeth the best, And seldom molested is my sweet rest.
2		I have walks to take, and news to read, With chit-chat and work the hours to speed; Good company, age, as good as the great Who have the charge of the “Empire State.”
3		When ill, we have nurses; kind they be, And doctors too, without extra fee; When well, we can leave for homes far and near, While the Word of Life may be conned with care.
4		Though sad, we may wait till brighter we grow, And health and good humor our faces make glow; When merry music may lend us her thrall, And consoling each other be less sad withall.
5		And Love may abide, defended by prayer, And our hearts and our hopes be brightened elsewhere; We may write to our homes, and see our dear friends, And contented and blessed our destiny ends

Birds with Stone Wings: Athanasius Kircher, 1664

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, most of which was original to him, and a lot of which was original to others and not credited, as was often the case with some scholarship at this time in history.   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 (the original of which is available from our blog bookstore), 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

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 original of this map is available for purchase from our blog bookstore.)

 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. 

 

 

 

Magnificent Displays of Quantitative Data by 5-Year-Olds

JF Ptak Science Books

"Do You Want to be a Whale or a Eagel?"[sic]

Walking down the hall of my daughter Tess' school today I came across these absolutely brilliant displays of information tacked up on bulletin boards.  The kids polled their classmates on whether they would rather be a whale or an eagle.  The designs of the survey results were staggering to me, purely brilliant reasoning and expression.

The results here are magnificently displayed, elegant and crisp, and of course with a child's beauty.

Another astonishing work of private clarity--I really do need to interview the statistician to find out the deep depth of what is being presented here. It is just beautiful.

And even though I don't quite follow this one, there is a LOT of effort in it:  perhaps the kids were asked to raise their hands for a whale and to stand to be an eagle.  Those hands though I have seen drawn in books and manuscripts going back to the 12th century--they have stayed basically the same for 800 years. 

My best wishes and congratulations to these children at Isaac Dickson School, Asheville, North Carolina.

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

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.

(The original print is available from our blog bookstore, by the way.)

   

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.

JF Ptak Science Books    Post 1343

In the history of attractive and useful displays of quantitative data, the effort of Frederick Erastus Pierce (1878-1935), 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)  and which was published in Harper's Weekly for 1894¹--is an iconic example. [Please note--I am offering an original of this map for sale on this blog's bookstore, though 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.

Proust Suits and Pressurized Cabins

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 mega-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.

But I can't leave this without at least a mention of Raoul Hausmann, whose "Self Portrait of a Dadasoph" is related to this line of collecting consciousnesses:

When this next 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 begins to present 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. Davis¹ 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:

1. 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.

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1341

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

The SAGE  (The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) was an "air traffic control device"¹ 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. This paper on the computer's ability to self-reference and check itself, by P.K. Luster, was written in 1958 and serves as an interesting insight into quality control for the world's first nation-wide computer communication network.

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. (This document is available for purchase from our blog bookstore.)

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.   

 Notes

1.  SAGE did become the template for SABRE as well as for the national air traffic control ssytem.

Exploring Faces at a U.S. Relief Station in Italy, 1918

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. [This photo is available for purchase at our blog bookstore, here.]

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

The Kindle vs. Books vs. Frankenstein's Monster. A Short Rant.

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1339  

Kindle and Co seem ready-made for a morality tale...except that it has been written, already, many times.  Digital reading appendages like the Kindle seem to me a future history of magnificent semi-failures, another episode in a long series of stories on how machines have corrupted their users I’m not a Luddite by any stretch, but I can’t help but think of the weaknesses of these devices when compared to a simple book, or stack of books, or bookcase, or library–I think that the Kindle is perfectly fine used in conjunction with these other things, but what seems to be the case for me is that Kindle & Etc. are replacing them–the real nuts and bolts of learning---and that I think is an enormous error.  Perhaps more important still is that the glorious possibilities of serendipitous discovery are being lost when you have such directed interaction as with a Kindle, compared to walking down an aisle of books in a  library (or g_d help us, in a bookstore).   What these digital tools can’t replicate is the incredibly varied sources for possible inspiration that you have when you walk yourself down between two walls of books.  You might start out looking for X, see something Y out of the corner of your eye, it reminds you of Z, which takes you to another range of books where you stumble across the “A” that you didn’t know existed and that you needed it. 

Bookstores are closing in droves, books in libraries are being replaced by stuff that enables social networking to occur while at the same time library hours/staff are being trimmed.  (A big percentage of libraries are already closed or closing on Sundays, which is a day when working class people might actually have to themselves to get to the libby.)  Magazines and newspapers are already abandoning print publications  and settling in for their run exclusively online.  The process of virtual replacement is already well underway. 

Hans Andersen’s (1805-1875) The Nightingale (1844) comes close to the mark in telling the future of these devices. The Emperor of China has a perfectly lovely, living nightingale which is replaced over as short time by a mechanical one; the robot-nightingale fails after a bit, but by that time the real nightingale has taken flight, no longer I service, vanished.  The Emperor is full of remorse, slipping into melancholia and depression, headed to death for the lack of the song of is nightingale–until the living one returns, restoring the Emperor to health. And sanity. 

Other, older lit tells similar stories of inception, confusion and lost purpose–though without the redemption part of the Andersen: an automaton appears in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s (1766-1822) Night Pieces (1816 ) in the short story “The Sandman”, an ingenious mechanism which happens also to be lifeless and soulless. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) s another soulless creation, though it was of biological, human pieces rather than metal, crunching the recent work in the manipulation (like that of Galvani) into something not recognizable....another piece of the coming world of electricity which in its essence has gone totally awry. 

Heinrich Heine’s On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings (1834) has a short story in which an accomplished mechanic/inventor decides to invent a man–and succeeds He builds himself an English gentleman, the description of which Heine uses to skewer the English¹, the inventor building a machine like a man who behaved and like and had the emotional range of a British person, though who lacked anything to back it up–in short, the machine lacked a soul Heine takes more than just the Brits on this, exploiting the engineers soulless invention as a standard for the emptiness of some aspects of the Industrial revolution.
Then there’s Hadaly, a mechanical electric  woman run found running around in Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's The Future Eve (1886) , with its high-Victorian nod to imaginary naughtiness with the no-tell robot. Talus, the “iron man” in Spenser’s Fairie Queen, the crystalline man in Goethe's Faust, the creation of “robotic” homunuclus in the philosophers eggs of many alchemists, plus a wide, encyclopedic assortment of other sorts of non-mechanical man-made-men.

And this of course is all before we get to the twentieth century.

I guess I’m just annoyed by the possible destructive nature of a supplemental tool becoming the primary object, a supplement to itself rather than something richer and fuller.  The Kindle and its assorted lot might seem less Nightingale-y to me and more like the sub-title to Shelley's work, The Modern Prometheus.

Notes:
                   
1. “...a human feeling in that leather breast, which are not usually to be found in the English, and it could articulate tones about its feelings and impart them, even with an audible sound, and it gave these tones a real English pronunciation; in short, this robot was a complete gentleman, and for being true man, he lacked only a soul...”

Replacing Clay Pipes with Glass, 1849

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1338

Glass is best left to its best uses--in lighting, decoration, ,chalcogenide glasses (in the construction of rw cds),
and even music (Beethoven, Mozart, Donizetti, Bach and many others have composed for the glass harmonica, armoinca, hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica)...and son on and on  But perhaps the use less thought of in general has been the use of glass as the conduit for aqueducts.

A 180-mile-long conduit.

I found this notice in the 20 January 1849 issue of Scientific American  The idea of making a glass pipe for transporting water to transport the special waters from Saratoga Springs, New York down to Manhattan, 180 miles away.  The backers for this plan were going to encase the glass piping in clay bricks, which makes sense of course, but then burying all of that in a coffin of cement...well, that present all sorts of problems if the pipe ever broke.There is some irony in the silica connection between the clay pipes the glass would've replaced and glass itself, but this is still just an awful idea.

 

Bombing England, 1940; a "Popular" Look from the Other Side, Part II

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1337

Earlier in this blog I wrote a post on an illustrated article that appeared in the Illustriete Zeitung for 5 September 1940.  On page 165 is an extraordinary two-part map, the upper part being a vellum-like overlay, showing the German bombardment of England.  (“Bombenregen ueber England.  England muss jetzt allein um seine insel Kaempfen…” )  The template map is in stark black and white, showing locations of “war” industries, chemical plants, rubber works, textile plants, metal industries and gas works . The overlay shows the outline of the island with 150 or so bombs, imprinted with a color code to show what sort of industry it was intended for.

By the time this issue of the Zeitung appeared, the Germans had almost spent themselves on their invasion of Britain (11 July-29 October 1940), and were well-past part two of a four-part invasion plane.  The third part would begin two days after the appearance of this article, the clock already almost ticked-out on the Luftwaffe's ability to pound the Island Nation into submission.  They felt out the defences in part I, while also bombing along the coast and into Liverpool and London itself, mining harbors and waterways, attacking convoys; part II continued the assault and probed and searched out the airfields, aircraft factories and radar sites (while continuing to mine the waters and bomb the cities). Part III continued the heavy assaults on Liverpool, London and other cities, and searched out the RAF--but the German losses were starting to mount up, and the RAF was beginning to win.  On September 15, 185 German aircraft were lost--a huge event--and the plans for Operation Sea Lion were called off, suspended indefinitely. 

The 3 October issue of the Zeitung(available for purchase at our blog bookstore, here) presented a large, two-page illustration of the Luftwaffe bombing London, which was suffering under the attack, flaming and smoking.  But the image by this time was mostly propagandistic, the end of the campaign only weeks away, the German air force staggering under the British response.

The end result was a terrific victory for the Brits, far beyond what the numbers show, even if the numbers are strong.  The U.K. losses included 544 aircrew killed, 422 aircrew wounded, and 1,547 aircraft destroyed.  The Nazi losses were 2,698 aircrew killed, 967 captured (638 missing bodies identified by British Authorities) and 1,887 aircraft destroyed.

The  Luftschlacht um England, the plan to overtake and destroy the British capacity in the air, was defeated. As long as the English had command of the airspace there would be no way that the Nazis could force an invasion by land/sea (at least in the minds of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht  and Hitler).  And so the Nazis failed--it was their first major defeat, and, especially, with the turning of attention east, it was a pivotal point of the war.

Hitler, Big Room, Little Desk, 1931

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1336

It is difficult to think of Hitler as just some guy sitting behind a desk.  But there he is, in 1931, sitting behind a desk with an enormous, pleated lamp sitting next to him, just Hitler in the paranoid-position (back to the corner of the room able to see anything that moves but being still in a secure position), at the edge of a big room with tall ceilings and a few chairs, looking a little grandmothery--if the grandmother wore a swastika armband.  But this is 1931, and Hitler was in the  developed stages of amassing votes and power, outfitting his political organization in uniforms and along military lines, drinking deeply of his hateful autobiography/social road map, biding his time.  He was still years away from the nation-destroyer he would become, looking small here, looking like a human being.

Its a good thing to be reminded of the common basis of people who became Gargantuan monsters, before their human nature was replaced by the horrifica of their thoughts and deeds, setting them apart from the rest of us.  The point in fact though is that Hitler and Pol Pot and Stalin and Mao and the other people-eaters of this century were "people" too. To make them somehow extra-human is to relieve ourselves of the responsibility of them; that what they have done was somehow outside the sphere of human ability.  They were just people, though people with no humanity.

The Nazis were sprung of the simplest elements--fear, hope, hate, revenge, and of course delusion.  But simple.  Part of the earliest mass of NSDAP literature, the stuff that helped fuel Hitler, was printed in this little shop.  One jackbooted man is doing the typesetting, another other running one of the tabletop presses. Two guys, a few machines, a paper cutter, a few trays of type. A dynamic speaker.  One radiator. One light bulb.

And of course someone willing to listen, as well as a greater mass of someones who chose to hear but not do anything about what it was they heard.