JF Ptak Science Books

The New Speed of Information, 1846

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Here's probably an obscure bit on the coming of a very large change in journalism and the dispersion of information: a short announcement of the use of the electric telegraph in the rapid reporting of war news. The notice appeared in the Compte Rendu des Seances de l'Academie des Sciences 15 June 1846 (volume 22 no. 24, p 1004), and it is communicated to the Academie by Francois Arago, and runs for only about 100 words. Arago mentions how quick the operation of the electric telegraph was (citing our Mr. Morse), basically drawing attention to this new mode of data dispersal. He uses the example of the speech of the U.S. President (James Polk) on the new Mexican-American War, which was begun 25 April 1846, just weeks earlier than this report was published. Arago doesn't mention the very dramatic spread of telegraphy lines and far-reaching nodes that blossomed in the U.S. Earlier in 1846...maybe he didn't know of them, yet. What he does talk about is the astonishing bit of the Polk's war address being disseminated so quickly—evidently the whole thing was transcribed and telegraphed in three hours. That seems today to be quite glacial, but this was done at a time when news was coming by packet steamer, Pony Express, and the U.S. Post by horse and wagon. To be suddenly able to disseminate news from Washington DC to Richmond and Albany and NYC and Boston all in a matter of hours from Morse to text was really quite astonishing.

On Flying Machines--Scientific American, 1848

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I found a short article on human flight ("Flying Machines") in the fourth volume of Scientific American (1848).  It is an interesting and occasionally predictive piece that saw a bit into the future, well past the contemporaneous failures and iron-punk possibilities of sky machines, into a place of "mathematical certainty.  The writer saw the possibility of heavier-than-air flight, only just not in 1848 (or any time soon). "The air furnishes a vast fund of power for the use of mankind, although as yet they have only used it to propel ships and wind-mills. We live in an age of great discoveries and improvements, and among these will certainly be ranked the navigation of the air." 

And so some snippets from the article: 

"Flying Machines and Perpetual Motions are very old and unfortunate acquaintances. No people have invented so many as the Germans, and many a poor fellow has lost his life by his fool hardy confidence in some machines he had invented to ride upon the winds, yet for all the accidents that have taken place to high flyers, from the Dutch Doctor at Ratisbone in 1692 to the unfortunate Englishman who perished a few years ago in London when descending by a parachute, there are still to be found new flying machines coming out every few months. An Austrian made quite a fine display in Cremone Gardens, London last winter, by taking several long jumps with a steam flyer. Since that we have heard no more about it, and presume it has met the fate of its illustrious predecessors...

"But the end of flying machines is not yet, and here we insert the description of a new and an original one certainly, taken from the Jacksonian published at Pontiac, Michigan... After describing how wings had been tried to beat the lark and eagle, he says:—“As wings then, have failed, and balloons been attended with no better success, men have begun to think that the end is unattainable, and that flying is a victory which man can never achieve."