JF Ptak Science Books

The Human Trust Fund (1929)

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No, not the work of George Costanza, but of someone else, a Chicago native who had an idea for saving the country, for saving humanity. I haven't read but the first and last pages, and I think that that was about enough--I'm not at all sure what the author's play was here, but whatever it was, he tried.  In any event, this pamphlet (13" x 8" and 24 leaves) was printed in 1929--there's no mention of The Depression that I could see (the epithet "Great" wouldn't be applicable for another 15 months or so)--and once belonged to the great but problematic H.L. Mencken, who didn't own it for long. This pamphlet is part of my Outsider Logic Collection, in the Department of Gallant Tries. 

Stacked-Tech: Things on Top of Other Things (1926).

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In just three or four decades into the skyscraper era and heavier-than-air powered flight there was a certain sense of planning to join those two technological (series of) achievements. This sense of enlightenment though didn't seem very enlightened, or practical. The idea of locating airports on the tops of tall buildings, or on structures covering rivers (like the Hudson or Thames), or on long and wide structures built over expanses of shorter inner-city buildings, seem to have had a life from the late 'teens into the 1940s.  They were struggling ideas that struggled. 

I found two more examples of this stuff-on-top-of-other-stuff tech thinking today. The first shows a structure 950' tall made to accommodate a strained amount of air traffic in the heart of a large metropolitan center. (There are numerous examples of this idea sprinkled throughout this blog--just pop the word "airport" into the Google search box at upper right and you should find 10 or so posts on the topic, all with great illustrations.) By the way, this was one busy dream of an airport, what with 20 planes coming and going. 

The second image is unusual but less-techy: a tennis court built on top of a reservoir:

I 'm not sure how hurting people were for spaces for a tennis court in 1926, but the competition for the open land for such a thing couldn't've been that severe. 

J.P. Joule and God

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(With thanks to David Wenner for the introduction to this paper by Joule.)

There is a real work of unexpected beauty in the last paragraph in “On Shooting Stars” Philosophical Magazine vol 32, 1848, pp 349-351, by James Prescott Joule,  thanking the creator of the universe for including an atmosphere for the Earth.

At the end of the day, the first law of thermodynamics is found in the law of the conservation of energy, which was found in the relationship of the nature of heat to mechanical work, which was found in the work of James Prescott Joule (“Wherever mechanical force is expended, an exact equivalent of heat is always obtained”.— J.P. Joule, 1818-1889, August, 1843.) The unit of energy called the “joule” (”used by the International Standard of Units (SI)...defined as the amount of work done on a body by a one Newton force that moves the body over a distance of one meter”--Universe Today/Astronomy ) is named for J.P. Joule.

After addressing some issues of "shooting stars", Joule writes his lovely closing sentiments, which to me can be easily arranged into a bit of "Found Poetry"--that is, it is the simple restructuring of the two paragraphs into a poetic format, and without changing any of the words. It is an interesting process, and I think Joule's language easily transcends its sleepy place at the end of a mostly-forgotten work half-way through a scientific journal.

Here it is: 

I.

I cannot but be filled with admiration and gratitude

for the  wonderful provision thus made

by the Author of nature

for  the protection of his creatures.

 

II.

Were it not for the atmosphere which covers us with a shield,

impenetrable in proportion to the violence

which it is called upon to resist, we should 

be continually exposed to a bombardment of the most fatal 

and irresistible character [of shooting stars].

To say nothing of the larger stones, 

no ordinary buildings could afford shelter from very small  particles

striking at the velocity

of eighteen miles per second. 

 

III.

Even dust flying

at such a velocity

would kill any animal exposed to it.      

 

This is the original bit of the poetry straightened-out, proper, and correct:

And the rest of the article: