JF Ptak Science Books

Early Views Extraterrestrial Views of the Earth and the Red Vegetation of Mars

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2762

I am not sure of when it was that the first view of the Earth from another planet appeared in print. They are certainly rare prior to 1900, so that when I saw (the following) 19th century images of extraterrestrial landscapes in Scientific American (November 23, 1877) with the Earth in the background I was stopped by their unexpectedness--how unusual that unusualness is I don't know.  I remember that the very busy and gifted Camille Flammarion's published views of the Earth like these in his Astronomie Populaire in 1880, though the images that follow were published several years earlier in the SA. 

The extraterrestrial landscapes are a leap of faith based on available observations, and no doubt that the readers of the late 19th century seeing these images for the first time would have been transported by their ingenuity and depth of understanding i n representing the Earth as just another bit in the sky when it is seen from other locations. 

These images also led to a note about a paper that Flammarion wrote for La Nature¹ in 1873 on what turns out to be the similarities of the atmospheres on Mars and Earth--and that led me to a somewhat earlier paper that he wrote for the Comptes Rednus that seems to have a little more punch than the later one. 

In the short paper in the CR² Flammarion observes that the Earth is mostly covered by water, and on Mars there is more “land/continental surface than maritime/sea surface”. “ L'étude détaillée de la planète montre que sa surface est bien différente de la surface terrestre, au point de vue du partage des terres et des mers. Chez nous, les trois quarts du globe sont couverts d'eau; sur Mars, au contraire, il y a plus de surface continentale que de surface maritime.”

He then notes that according to spectrum analysis the Martian atmosphere and seas and snows are made of water just as they are on Earth. “...l'analyse spectrale montre que l'atmosphère de Mars est chargée de vapeur d'eau comme la nôtre, et que ces mers, ces neiges, ces nuages sont réellement composés de la même eau que nos mers et nos météores aqueux”. And at the end of the article, saying that the atmosphere of the Earth and Mars are very similar: “ La météorologie de Mars est à peu près la même que celle de la Terre; l'eau y est dans le même état physique et chimique que sur notre propre globe...”

Also, there is vegetation on Mars which is very different from that of Earth, and that is what gives the planet its red color, as the plants growing there must be red. “...comme ce n'est pas l'intérieur du sol que nous voyons, mais la surface, la coloration rouge doit être celle de la végétation de Mars, quelle que soit d'ailleurs l'espèce de végétation qui s'y produise.”

In his last summary point, Flammarion makes a case for the possibility of life on Mars, saying that conditions for necessary for life on Earth and life on Mars are familiar and similar for both planets (“...organic conditions there are not very different from those that have presided over manifestations of life on the surface of the Earth.”)“Enfin les raisons d'analogie nous montrent sur cette planète, mieux que sur toute autre, des conditions organiques peu différentes de celles qui ont présidé aux manifestations de la vie à la surface de la Terre.”

And so some pretty strong observations about water and snow and life on Mars, all coming before the Schiaparelli developments and the canals four years later. 

That was a long digression--the Earth from afar images follow the footnotes. 

 

Notes:

1. Camille Flammarion, “La Planète Mars d’après les dernières observations astronomiques” in La Nature - Revue des sciences, n° 10, page 145. (August, 1873) and is translated soon after for Popular Science https://todayinsci.com/F/Flammarion_Camille/FlammarionCamille-Mars.htm

2. _____. “Sur la planete Mars”, in Comptes Rendus, vol 77 no 4, p. 278, July 28, 1873.

 

 

Francis Galton, Life on Mars, and Extraterrestrial Communication (1896)

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2761

Okay, these two images¹ at the head and foot of this post have almost nothing to do with Mars and Francis Galton, except that they were advertisements in the issue of Nature (November 12, 1896) in which his notice on the possibility of extraterrestrial communication is discussed. That, and that the ads are very engaging, as is the report on Galton. Actually this is a report on a Galton paper that appeared two weeks earlier in the Fortnightly Review (“Intelligible signals between neighbouring stars”, volume 60, pp 657-64, November 1, 1896), and shared to a more scientifically-centered reading population than the other journal.  (Full text: https://galton.org/essays/1890-1899/galton-1896-fortnightly-review-signals-stars.pdf)

It seems to me that the Galton—a genius who worked across many diverse fields—was having at a thought experiment in interstellar communication. Given the contemporary mileu of possible/expectant life on Mars, Galton thought about ways in which we could send some sort of communication, and what the logic of that “language” might be. He presents the idea of symbols, picture writing, with a combined arithmetic etymology to display an additive language that would show Martian observers a level of intelligence on Earth.

Galton was hardly alone in figuring out a communication system though from what I can tell seems to stand out in his thinking on what was actually being said. The system itself was one of reflected light from the sun using a vast array of mirrors, an approach that would also be worked on by A. Mercier a few years later in 1899 and by W. Pickering (with a very mechanically-ingenious and enormous display).

In any event it seems that at this point of the decade that the possibility of life on Mars was very distinct--almost in some cases a foregone conclusion.  To illustrate this, here is a short story about a short notice of a considerable prize offered by a citizen of France for scientific achievement. It was intended for astronomical and medical achievement, and was established by Anne Emile Clara Gouget (d. 1891), the wife of Marc Guzman, in memory of their son, Pierre Guzman. The amount was a very hefty 100,000 francs, which went a long long way in turn-of-the-century France, and which today would be equivalent to about $1 million or some such.

The preference for the award is in astronomy—specifically, to the person/s who could successfully contact an alien civilization. That contact however does not include Mars. It was during this decade especially that there was much debate about the atmosphere on Mars, and whether it was vegetative, and whether there was an intelligent and advanced society capable of construction was what was seen by some as a massive system of canals across the planet. So with this in mind, Mme. Goguet-Guzman like many others assumed that there was some sort of life on Mars, and so Mars was excluded from the prize for contacting an extraterrestrial civilization.

I've read in some sources that the astronomer/popular writer Camille Flammarion² “announced” the prize in 1891, though the first published account that I can find appears in the Comptes Rendus in 1900. The notice states that Mars is excluded from consideration of the 100,000 franc prize, and in the event that no one wins another award would be generated from the interest compounded by the prize deposit every five years to a deserving person in science and medicine.

Here it is in translation:

“Mrs. Clara Goguet, widow Guzman, bequeathed to the Academy of Sciences a sum of one hundred thousand francs for the foundation of a prize bearing the name, Pierre Guzman, in memory of her son, and will be awarded to [the person] who finds a way to communicate with a planet other than the planet Mars.”

“Foreseeing that the prize of one hundred thousand francs has not yet been awarded. The founder wanted, until this prize was won, that the, capital, accumulated for five years, constituted a price [in itself], always to be given in the name of Pierre Guzman, which would be awarded to a French scientist or foreigner who makes an important advance to Astronomy.

The five-year prize represented by the interests of the capital, will be awarded,for the first time, in 1905.” (See the original French version, below.)

 Getting back to Galton, here's the Nature summary in full:

 

Revisiting the Vermeer of the Tars

JF Ptak Science Books  Reworking post 842 (from 2008)

In England, women were welcomed to the (paid) workforce during the years of the First World War (1914-1918)—their employment in traditionally male positions enabled those they replaced to go out to the front and die for their country.  Thus the women seen here in the News Photo Service Agency photograph (taken in 1918), working at spraying tar in the streets of London, were appreciated, and tolerated.  For women in England the War blasted away the contrivances of formally scheduled employment:  something like 12% of fall women in England were working as servants and house cleaners.   Come the War, women were offered jobs of revolutionary stature in a wide range and variety of work.  The Civil Service employment for women went from 33,000 in 1911 to 102,000 in 1921, and trade union membership rose 160% (357,000 in 1914 to 1,000,000 in 1918 (with men showing a 44% increase at the same time); for the most part, though, employers took advantage of the situation, and the women still generally earned less than half of the salary as comparable male workers did (or the men they replaced). 

Writing the Epitaph for the Martian Canals (1913)

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2760

I wanted to amend a post from last week, “The Found-Poetry in Erasing Straight Lines from Maps of Mars (1909)”, which described the work of Eugene Michele Antoniadi and his superb observational and theoretical work of 1909 in describing the planet Mars. He had a very writerly way about him, more creative and conversational than most people who were writing on scientific subjects. In particular he was very gentlemanly in public and private correspondents who held opinions different from his observation facts about what was going on on Mars.

In this 1913 paper¹ in the journal Popular Astronomy, Antoniadi drives a very good-natured but very sharp spike into whatever it was that was left of the quivering heart of the collective who believed in (1) canals on Mars and (2) well, Martians. He gets to it right away, addressing the “wonderful phenomena” of overnight growth and decline in the numbers and dimensions of canals, the explanation for which escaped reason; for the Mars/canals believers “...the vast powers of Nature were found totally inadequate...” and so had to resort to more colorful and dramatic explanations to suit their needs:

“Canals scores of miles wide, and hundreds of miles long, were observed in a few days, or even hours, to double, either by the formation of a parallel band, or by the disappearance of the original canal, and by the formation of two new parallel streaks separated by hundreds of miles. Nor were hesitations in these doublings neglected to be put on record, since canals were seen to be alternately single and double on the same night.

"To account for these wonderful phenomena, the vast powers of Nature were found totally inadequate; and thus it was that Schiaparelli was led to enunciate the idea of the artificial origin of the canals, conceiving the larger of them to be composed of six different watercourses, whose dykes would be opened now and then by the Martian minister of agriculture.”--pg 417

Antoniadi announced that these “speculations” of life and canals on Mars “have failed to do the utmost with their cherished idea”, and that on the face of it in order to accommodate one difficult aspect disagreeing with their theories—the appearance and disappearance of canals that “the Martian engineers would be constantly digging and destroying their watercourses”.

“Speculations of such a character were eagerly embraced by M. Flammarion and other popular Continental writers. Yet it is to be regretted that the originator of this artificial theory, and his imitatore failed to do the utmost with their cherished idea. For, inasmuch as the canals appear straight about the central meridian, and also when carried by rotation near the limb, it is obvious that the Martian engineers would be constantly engaged in rapidly digging and destroying their watercourses, so as to make them look always straight to the observers on the earth. “pp 417-418

He then discusses that the canals disappear under more powerful telescopes than those less-powerful preferred by the Canal people, and then devastates the idea of the “deceitful” nature of the discoveries by showing the imagery of the two instruments side-by-side, announcing at the end that the canal outlook “has been defeated, both by theory and by observation”:

“The student who passes many consecutive hours in the study of Mars with medium-sized instruments, is liable to catch rare glimpses of straight lines, single or double, generally lasting about one quarter of a second ...Here we have a vindication of Schiaparelli's discoveries. But their deceitful character will obtrude itself on
the observer using a large telescope, when, in the place of the lines, he will hold steadily, either a winding, knotted, irregular band, or the jagged edge of a half-tone, or some other complex detail... In their anxiety to prop their views against natural law, believers in the reality of the linear canals have presumed to champion the alleged superiority of small over large telescopes; and this either in revealing planetary detail, or in separating close double stars. But the attempt has been defeated, both by theory and observation...”--p 420

And finally, the epitaph is inscribed:

 “Some observers will continue proclaiming the superiority of small telescopes. Ponderous volumes will still be written to record the discovery of new canals. But the astronomer of the future will sneer at these wonders; and the canal fallacy, after retarding progress for a third of a century, is doomed to be relegated into the myths of the past.”--p 424

There was no room for a side-door escape for the Canal-believers in this paper as was the more mellow and accommodating paper of 1909. No prisoners in 1913.

Notes:

1. E.M. Antoniadi, "considerations on the Physical Appearance of the Planet Mars", in Popular Astronomy, 1913, volume 21, pp 416-424. 

Blank and Missing Things: Astronomers

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• Part of a long series on Blank, Empty, and Missing Things

I found this fantastic photograph of the attendees of the meeting of the Astronomische Gesellschaft at Hamburg, August 1913 in the December issue 1913 issue of Popular Astronomy. This is an august group, and of course they're not "blank" or "missing"--its just a function of some out-of-context observations on the opaque overlay that serves to identify all of the folks in the massive group photo. (I've encountered these numerous times over the years and always have found the Found-Art aspect of them interesting and amusing.) The fact of the matter, though, is that there were some very high-powered people at this meeting.  Offhand I identify Mader, Eddington, Abbott, Mueller, Plassman, Struve, Plaskett, Campbell, Repsold(s), Jansen, Schwarzchild, Backlund, Seeliger, and numerous others. 

And the full presentation:

Found-Art in Algol

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

Here we have another example of Found-Art in a scientific paper--this one looking Duchampian (again, especially if it were spiraling), or perhaps Dadaist, or Futurist.  In actuality it is something both "harder and simpler if you think about it) (referencing not-Duchamp) and "harder but simpler if you don't think about it" (referencing not-Yogi Berra): it is an article meant for the general masses of pop science reading in the Scientific American Supplement for September 11, 1886 and it is trying to make sense of the famous and mysterious behavior of the star Algol. This is star B Persei, in Perseus, the constellation's second brightest star, and as it would turn out it is an eclipsing binary star. The image below tries to make sense of the behavior of the star--the observation of which was published in 1671 (though the true first accounts may well be ancient.) The variability of the star would only be confirmed 60 years later, and then 50 years later until the remarkable John Goodricke determined the periodicity of the star. 

 

Alphabet Tubes (1895)

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I've written a couple of times on this blog on "tubes", including tubular cars and ships, and of course pulp sci-fi adventures in tubular rocket ships, person intra-space tube propulsion systems, x-ray tubes, vacuum tubes, "tubes of uranium, and that sort, tubes as tubes. Plus there was the "extended tube", like telescopes, canons, boilers, vacuum tubular whatzis of the future, plus the extended idea of the tube as an open-ended shaft and tunnel (there must be an opening on both ends otherwise you have a "hole", which has its own category).  In these side tube researches I've never encountered the idea or phrase "alphabet tube", until today. 

The Domincan priest Father Vincenzo Calendoli invented (between 1893 to 1895) an unusual and seemingly-simple-but-hardly-so linotype machine that was seen by some as “the typsetting machine of the future...”(--C. Cochrane, American Printer and Lithographer, vols 21-23, 1896). The image below shows Calendoli in serene concentration seated at his machine which looks like a cross between a small Jacquard loom and an odd harpsichord (emphasis on the harp). And what Calendoli is concentrating on is this, his keyboard:

 

The Scientific American Supplement  (1895, pp 16055-16057) illustration is reproduced exactly in an uncommon publication called the Rosary Magazine, (1895)--exact, with the exception of the additional caption: the writer annotates it by identifying the “checker board”, “inclined wire and galleys”, and the indescribably beautifully-named “alphabet tubes”! The explanation of what this tube is is far less interesting than its title--tubes filled with type--though the machine overall was extraordinary.

 

The Found-Poetry in Erasing Straight Lines from Maps of Mars (1909)

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2759

There was good strong debate on the issues of Martian “canals” and whether or not they were there by chance or by Percival Lowell's (and others) intelligent design. The debate dates range from about 1886 to 1909 or so, though the real method in the intelligent life argument comes in at about 1895.  The “1909” part of the endgame is embodied in the interesting paper “Observations de la planete Mars, faites a l'Observatoire de Meudon”¹ by Eugene Michel Antoniadi, which is also the holder of some superior and evocative vocabulary and imagery.

Antoniadi made a series of painstakingly-executed photos of the planet with Europe's largest telescope (the 33" "Grande Lunette") at Meudon. They revealed that the canals as hard geometric forms had indeed been a sort of optical illusion, and that the new and more-definitive photographs showed them in their true and far more complex existence, more as naturally-occurring objects than something that was designed by another life form.

• (“During the planetary opposition in 1909, Antoniadi observed Mars at the celebrated 33-inch Meudon Observatory telescope, the largest in Europe. Although he observed for only nine nights during a month-long stay in Paris, he reported seeing Mars so clearly at times that the linear appearance of the canals dissolved into an intricate mess of smaller, irregular details, and he noted that 'the geometrical "canal" network is an optical illusion; and in its place the great refractor shows myriads of marbled and chequered objective fields, which no artist could ever think of drawing'.)--“Mapping the Mars Canal Mania: Cartographic Projection and the Creation of a Popular Icon”, Imago Mundi, 58:2, 2006.

The Antoniadi photos came only about five years after the true "first" photograph of what were thought to be canals was made by Percival Lowell's assistant, Carl O. Lampland. (Antoniadi by the way spent nine years as a special assistant to Camille Flammarion at his personal observatory.)  In addition to the debate of how the “canals” came to be, there was another on whether the features identified as “canals” were there at all. It was Lampland's work that seemed to settle at least that issue, establishing photographically that there was indeed something there. Lowell seized on this work as confirmation of his theories--that if the canals were proven to be there then it followed logically that his iterations of Martian intelligence would also be true. Here Lowell probably acted too rashly, as the photos showed that the canals also weren't like the patterned and highly-geometrical structures shown in Lowell's maps. (That said, the British Astronomical Society adopted the position in their 1906 annual meeting that the Lampland photos served as the confirmation that Lowell had been seeking...)

The Lowell canals as constructed objects hypothesis lost steam after 1905, and met the large part of its end on the work by Antoniadi on what was evidently a perfect night of viewing on 30 September 1909, the primum mobili aspect removed in favor of natural causes.

In the paper Antoniadi observed 50 canals and before he described them he defined them, the definition coming from one of the original namers of the canals as “canali” (or “channels”)--Schiaparelli--and not Lowell, who interpreted the “canali” as “canals”, with the armature that they were constructed by someone or something. Antoniadi writes with certainty in this paper: “a canal is a [banrle?] or greyish line of regions called the differences of brightness of neighboring points, which constitute the details of the image...”²  which leads us far away from the material intelligence argument.

Antoniadi then sets down an 8-point descriptive list of canal characteristics, which is beautifully written and when presented in a certain way takes on a very poetic form. His original description reads: “(a) En ombres diffuses, plus ou moins îrréijulières, dont quelques-unes paraissent doubles d'une manière fugitive;  (b) en estompages noueux;  (c) en masses grises, informes et disjointes;  (d) en estompages irréguliers, minces dans le vcuMiiage d'une haie des mers martiennes, et s'élargissnnt en une ombre vaste et confuse plus loin, comme des neuves avec leurs tributaires, vus a une très grande distance; (e) en alignements d'un très petit nombre de lacs; (f) en lacs in-éguliers, simples et bien isoler-; (g) en bords de pâles demi-tons; (h) en lignes noires très courtes, sinueuses ou courbes.”

Here's the description, reformatted and translated:

“Our observations lead us to divide the channels into several categories, namely:

In diffuse shadows, more or less irregular, some of which appear

double in a fleeting way;

In gnarled blobs;

In gray masses, shapeless and disjointed;

In irregular, thin blurring, in the construction of a hedge of

Martian seas, and widen into a vast and confused shadow further on, like

new with their tributaries, seen at a great distance;

In alignments of a very small number of lakes;

In 'simple lakes, simple and well insulated;

In edges of pale semitones;

In very short black lines, sinuous or curved.

 

Antoniadi concludes (translated):

“In this nomenclature, we have not understood the fugitive straight lines, often called channels, which are visible only during a fraction of second and which can be due to an illusion.. These first observations do not confirm the existence of a network of geometric straight lines, crisscrossing in all directions. Even, by very calm images, we have recognized, not in a fleeting way but for several consecutive seconds, a structure of continental regions quite different from the previous one. These regions are shown covered with a large amount of greyish mottling, irregular, complex and gnarled, which no artist can render.

I was very surprised to find such a significant paper rendered in such a poetic manner.

Notes:

1. ANTONIADI, E.-M. “Observations de la planete Mars, faites a l'Observatoire de Meudon. In: Comptes Rendus, 15 November 1909, pp 836-838 in the weekly issue, WITH a lovely full-page map of Mars.

2. Antoniadi remarks elsewhere that the lack of geometry on the planet "was conspicuous by its complete absence".--McKim, R. J., “The life and times of E.M. Antoniadi, 1870-1944. Part II: The Meudon years”, Journal of the British Astronomical Association, vol.103, no.5, p.219-227, 1993. There is a long report with 100 illustrations by Antoniadi in the Memoirs of the British Astronomical Association (vol XX, part II) published in the second year of the War, 1915--on the cover of that report is a very strong but still measured statement by George Ellery Hale: "The total absence of straight lines...seems to me significant". 

McKim goes on to note the polite correspondence between Antoniado and Lowell, including the very generous suggestion to Lowell that the later's observations were obscured and complicated by Martian cloud cover. 

Finding Anthropomorphism in an Electric Chair Patent (1897)

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This image of among the first electric/electrocution chairs is based on the designs of Dr. Alfred P. Southwick (1826-1898, MDS, DDS, SUNY Buffalo), who came up with the idea and started experimenting with it beginning in 1881. His was a mission of mercy, looking to find a quick if not instant salient to carry out the death penalty of a convicted murderer. NY Governor David B. Hill (1843-1910) looked to Southwick for a solution to a more humane way of executing people, establishing a distinguished panel of advisers to help him with this task. (In the small-world department, Hill succeeded Grover Cleveland as governor in 1885 following Cleveland's election as president of the U.S.--he also acted as executioner in at least two cases while he was the Sheriff of Erie county in the mid 1870s.)

Southwick's design/chair was first used on the condemned criminal William Kemmler in August 1890. Most everyone who witnessed this first attempt were aghast at the spectacle; George Westinghouse is reported to have uttered that the executions “would have been better off using an axe”. Theoretically the first application of electricity kills the brain in less time than it takes the body to respond to pain. This seems not to have been the case in many instances.

No tong afterwards Edwin F. Davis (1846-1923) conducted his own research on an effective and humane way to execute people and was awarded a patent in August 1897 for his “electrocution chair”. Davis would serve as NY state's “electrician”/electrocutionist from 1890-1914, delivering the final blow to 240 of the condemned during that time.

It was strange to me how anthropomorphic the design was, including the obvious head and less so for arms and feet. Overall, I think the relationship to a human form is unmistakable. 

Excerpt from the article illustrating the 1888 electric chair:

“Execution by Electricity. The State of New York may pride herself in the fact that the gallows is to be banished and a more humane and scientific method of executing criminals is to be instituted. On June 4 Governor [David B.] Hill signed the bill authorizing that criminals should be put to death by an electric shock. The bill is to go into effect on January 1 1889 and new method of execution be applied in the punishment of crimes committed after date.”

SciAm writes that “instant death” occurs with the electric chair—it doesn't. The condemned would be lucky to have their brains damaged enough to not register pain, as it takes 45 seconds to several minutes for death to occur.

“...the criminal is seated bound to a chair having a metal seat connected with one pole of the current. At the back of the chair there is an adjustable head rest having a metal plate on its face and a metal band which passes around the forehead of criminal. The wires may be connected with dynamo which according to the bill may be of any approved type or the current may be supplied from electric light plant or there may be a private plant arranged especially for that purpose at the place of execution. Sponges or dampened cloths should be at the points of contact with the convict to render connection more perfect. At the proper moment switch is turned by the officer and instant death ensues. The current passes along the spinal column and the brain and nerve centers. The current may be few moments to bring about complete exhaustion.”

Scientific American, 30 June 1888, vol 58.

A Good Question on the Canals of Mars: "Are They Really There?" (1903)

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Edmund Ledger (1841-1914, 38-year Member Royal Astronomical Society, professor of astronomy at Gresham College, 1875-1914) asks an excellent question in his short article, “The Canals of Mars”, in the Scientific American Supplement of 1903 (#1434 June 27, 1903, p 22983-4). He quickly reviews some current thinking on Schiaparelli's canali and their reception as “canals”, made by Martians, and in his doubt asks the question: “Are they really there?”¹

The canals had been questioned before of course, including by Ledger himself. Earlier in 1895 Ledger described one impossibility of the Seechi-named and employed-by- Schiaparelli canali as canals just in their sheer size: that in order for astronomers to observe the canals that they had to be at least 20 miles wide in addition to being thousands of miles long...a feat too great for anything to accomplish, something far beyond comprehension. (The Suez canal, completed not long before this, would have been nothing compared to the Martian works, being just about five times as long as the canali were thought to be wide. Also thinking no doubt would have been tempered in a bad way—like a poorly tempered anvil and its unpleasing response to being struck by a hammer—by the French failures in the decades that they squandered trying to build the 50-mile-long Panama Canal.)

Bubbles, Anti-Bubbles, and Reflections (and Not)

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2758     

[For Jeff Donlan, Extreme Answer Lad of Answers!]

This article was just a small 4" or so notice  in the Scientific American on 2 August 1879, written for a new sort of apparatus to make bubble-blowing easier, or more effective, or "rounder", or less anti-bubbly. (Actually that last would be a trick though I guess you could rig something like this up in an anti-air-breathing way, to create a bubble of liquid encapsulated by a layer of gas surrounded by a liquid. This is actually pretty easy to do standing around and would probably be a much harder thing to accomplish if you needed an apparatus for it. By the way "anti-bubble" should not be associated with the "Dirty Bubble", which is a character from SpongeBob SquarePants.) 

Back to the illustration: it is only about 2" tall and a bit of a "filler", but enough care is given it that it displays something which you never really see on bubbles in artwork: a reflection of an image! 

 

If you go to Google and search out Renaissance/Bubble/painting or some such, you will find a number of examples of fine-looking bubbles: Gerrit Dou's young boy blowing bubbles has life to the boy but not so much to the bubbles he's blowing; J.E. Mallais bubble boy also has some somber fun but little exclusivity is paid to the bubble, same to for Naiveau, and de Gheyn; David Bailly's self portrait has three happy bubbles with flair and color, and Desjardin's allegory's bubble maker is standing on a bubble with a fair amount of color and light to it. Even  the much-reproduced "Soap Bubbles" (ca. 1733-4) painting  by Jean Siméon Chardin (1699–1779)--which is perhaps one of the most famous antiquarian paintings involving bubbles--finds us with a bubble that is not very bubbly, without much reflection and optical interest...a too-subtle bubble. Not so in this image above, the anonymous artist collecting the 25-cent fee and giving the bubble some of the greatest bubble-life that I've noticed. 

One thing those older artists do have a feel for more so than this piece above is the thinness of the wall of a bubble--here it looks pretty defined whereas with the others you get a real sense of lightness and fragility (though hardly knowing the thickness in terms of _^...as a matter of fact some of the artists mentioned were active before Newton, others before Huygens, and all before Young.) Anyway even though the business of bubbles seems to be kids' stuff, with children playing at making bubbles in the artwork mentioned above, bubbles are worthy of some real thinking--if you understand bubbles (and anti-bubbles), you can address a fair amount more than that. 

[I can't really tell what the bubble-blower is seeing, what is being reflected, though one of the objects definitely seems to be a painting...]

How Warsaw Fell (1944)

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2757 (expanding an earlier post) 

The bottom line of the 63-day-long Second Warsaw Uprising (August/September 1944) is that the Soviet Union allowed the Polish Home Army to fail, watching from its position across the Vistula as the Nazis and Poles slugged it out, both exhausting themselves, the Nazis ultimately defeating the Poles, eliminating most of the Soviet concern for the Polish military and government, allowing the Soviet Union to take the country over more completely when the time came a few months earlier.  It was the Soviets' choice to see two enemies annihilate themselves to have more control over Poland and immediately turn it into a vassal state when it rolled into Warsaw in January, with 85% of the city destroyed ("at the moment of its fall practically the whole city was [razed] to the ground") and 600,000 of the city’s population  dead, along with 80% of the Home Army. 

• Full text (though not from my copy) here, at Instytut Józefa Piłsudskiego w Londynie :http://pilsudski.org.uk/archiwa/dokument.php?nonav=&salatka=1&nrar=709&nrzesp=108&sygn=88&handle=709.238/632

 

Found-Abstract Art in Acoustics (with a Nod to Duchamp)

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post 

Just yesterday I posted on Found-Abstract art  (http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2018/10/found-art-in-electrical-hardware-1885.html) in a cross section of a conduit of telephone wires from 1885. Just now in research a bit on Tesla I found the following diagram for a classroom demonstration in acoustics (appearing in Nature, 11 February 1892) which could easily be added to a list of unintentional/unrecognized pre-Abstract Art art. If you varied the disks in black and white and motorized the whole thing you could imagine it another decade in the future as a work by Duchamp. As it is, it is an ingenious piece of thinking (the whole article follows):

And one still of many from Mr. Duchamp's "Anemic Cinema", 1926: 

For a video of the film: https://youtu.be/dXINTf8kXCc

Also a nice piece on Duchamps optical experiments from Hyperallergic: https://hyperallergic.com/323582/duchamps-spinning-optical-experiments/

Defining the Work: Two Examples of Describing Standard Terms (1710)

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Over the years I've seen many architectural prints, and I've come to determine that I most enjoy the comparative views.  It is uncommon to see a single-sheet engraving dedicated to different forms of columns, as we see here in plate 93 (page 307)  of volume one of A.C. Daviler's Cours d'Architecture qui comprend les Ordres de Vignole...published in Paris in 1710. Daviler (1653-1701),was an architect and a student of  Jean-Francois Blondel (1683-1756) who worked very extensively on the architectural theory of Giacomo Barozzi or Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola (1507-1573). Here he identifies and classifies 20 different types of columns, just to make sure that everyone was on the same page, so to speak:

Actually, the very first engraving in the work is dedicated to a definition of terms, establishing the basis for the forms that would be discussed over the following thousand pages.  It is an excellent way to start a book, making sure that everyone has a common identification for what standard words would mean. It is a standard and very good idea but not often illustrated: 

A Short but Good Report on a Major Paper by Tesla, 1892

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In January 1892, the 34-year-old Nikola Tesla gave an interesting and significant lecture on ("alternate currents of high potential and frequency") in London, first to the Royal Institution and second to the Institution of Electrical Engineers, which was summarized in this short paper in Nature (volume 45, #1163, 1892) reproduced below. This is a continuation it seems of his famous July 1891 lecture in which he first addressed his experiments with alternating current, and which gained him international attention. The full lecture may be seen at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/ExperimentsWithAlternateCurTeslaNikola5098/page/n0