JF Ptak Science Books

Allied Nicknames for Japanese Aircraft, 1944

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2712   

The outline are details from a notebook written as classroom notes (ca. 1944) by a naval student of the Naval Air Combat Information School at Quonset Point, Rhode Island. Generally the diagrams are relatively small for the amount of information conveyed. The printed text for the curriculum and classes are nearly all marked "RESTRICTED" in the typed original of the offset pages.  The entire document is about 150pp long, and if there is interest in the contents I'd probably reproduce the entire thing--it is surprising how much can be learned and how much is revealed even in the multi-page lecture descriptions.

This is an extract “from Pilot's letter” describing the Japanese aircraft encountered and using the McCoy/Williams/Grattan shorthand-slang method for identifying the aircraft. Evidently using the Japanese names and designators was clumsy and complicated, so an alternative means was developed using common given names, trees, and birds to identify Japanese aircraft.

“In mid-1942, Captain Frank T. McCoy, a United States Army Air Forces military intelligence officer from the 38th Bombardment Group assigned to the Allied Technical Air Intelligence Unit in Australia, set out to devise a simpler method for identifying Japanese aircraft. Together with Technical Sergeant Francis M. Williams and Corporal Joseph Grattan, McCoy

• divided the Japanese aircraft into two categories; fighters and everything else...
• boys' names to the fighters,
• names of girls to the others...
• training aircraft were named after trees.
• single engine reconnaissance aircraft were given men's names...
• multi-engine aircraft of the same type were given women's names.
• (t)ransports were given girls' names that all began with the letter "T"
• Gliders were given the names of birds.”--edited, from Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_Allied_names_for_Japanese_aircraft

Here are the “translations” of the U.S. Names for Japanese aircraft in this short report in order of appearance

• ZEKE: Mitsubishi A6M, Navy Type 0 Carrier Fighter. [This is the legendary “Zero” aircraft, so called as it was manufactured in the Imperial Year of 2600, or 1940, and adopting the final zero (or two) as a nickname in its Japanese designation. The “Zero” was “Zeke” for another six months or so before it was widely switched out. By the time of this report—November 1943—the “Zero”, which was recognized as the finest and most lethal carrier-launched fighter plane in then world, was decidely less so than, the Allies catching up by mid-1942 to make it roughly the equal of the best Alied fighter planes, and then increasingly less so until in 1944 it was considered outdated.
• HAP: Mitsubihi AGM3, Navy Type 0 Carrier Fighter Model 32
• OSCAR: Nakajima Ki-43, Army Type 1 Fighter
• TONY: Kawasaki Ki-61, Army Type 3 Fighter
  RUFE: Nakajima A6M2-N, Navy Type 2 Interceptor/Fighter-Bomber
• PETE: Mitsubishi F1M, Navy Type 0 Observation Seaplane
• DAVE: Aichi D3A
• VAL: Aichi D3A, Navy Type 99 Dive Bomber
  DINAH: Mitsubishi Ki-46, Army Type 100 Command Reconnaissance Aircraft
• LILY: Kawasaki Ki-48, Army Type 99 Twin-engined Light Bomber
• SALLY: Mitsubishi Ki-21Army Type 99 Dive Bomber
• NELL: Mitsubishi 3GM, Navy Type 96 Attack Bomber
• HELEN: Nakajima Ki-49, Army Type 100 Heavy Bomber
• BETTY: Mitsubishi G4M, Navy Type 1 Land-based Attack Aircraft
• TESS: Douglas DC2, Navy Transport
• EMILY: Kawanishi H8K, Navy Type 2 Large Flying Boat

When Did the Term "Computer Science" First Appear?

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Some time ago I wrote a post on the origins of some scientific words, just to see how long they have been around--some are well-known in their newness (like "scientist" coming along in 1834, ¹  anonymously referenced in the Quarterly Review, volume 51, page 59), others not so.

And so when an interesting word relating to artificial intelligence appeared I wondered when AI itself did (J. McCarthy 1955 and then Marvin Minsky 1956)...which led to the question of how old the term "computer science" is, and so on. Not wanting to spend more than a half hour on this I decided to establish the Oxford English Dictionary as the baseline for earliness in the first (or at least very early) appearances in English of these words and let it go at that. So here's the list, a quick shake-and-bake on the early origins of some standard and not-so-standard words in computer science.

A footnote here is that 10 of the 38 words here appear during the life of Charles Babbage (whose eye are posted above). 

Notes:

1.  The word is provided to us in the text of an article on Mary Somerville by William Whewell who references the word "scientist" coming from "a gentleman" who was  I guess himself; he uses the word under his own name in 1840.

• Computer Science. 1956   N.Y. Times 28 Oct. iii. 21 (advt.)    "Unparalleled opportunities to associate with the prominent pioneers of computer science, at outstanding salaries. Electronic engineers (circuit designers and magnetics engineers), logical designers, [etc.]."

• Computer programming: 1952   Proc. ACM National Meeting (Toronto) 20/1   "In fact three principles should apply to computer programming and operation in general, and not just to code checking." This was followed by “computer programmer” after three years.  

• And so:

• computationalism, n.1979

• computationalist, n....1956

• computatist, n.1611

• computative, adj.a1538

• computator, n.1591

• compute, n.1483

• compute, v.1579

• computed, adj.1680

When Did "The Great War" Become "World War I"?

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When does the Oxford English Dictionary establish the first uses of "World War I", "World War One", "First World War", etc?

World War, n.  

A war involving many nations of the world; spec. that of 1914–18 or of 1939 45.First, Second, Third World War: see the first element.

1848   People's Jrnl. 4 250/1   A war amongst the great powers is now necessarily a world-war

1864   G. Haven National Serm. (1869) Contents p.xx. (title)    The world war: aristocracy and democracy.

1889   R. B. Anderson tr. V. Rydberg Teutonic Mythol. i. xxxiv. 139   From the standpoint of Teutonic mythology it is a world war [Sw. världskrig]; and Völuspa calls it the first great war in the world—folcvig fyrst i heimi.

1900   N. Amer. Rev. Nov. 653   The South African war, following immediately upon the close of the Peace Conference at The Hague, has not yet reached its end, and already the horizon in Eastern Asia is lurid with the glare of a world-war.

World War I  n. (also World War One, World War No.1) = First World War n. at first adj., adv., and n.2 Special uses 2b. Abbreviated WWI.

1939   Time 18 Sept. 10/2   Exports of arms, munitions and related materials in World War I amounted..to only 25% of total exports to the Allies.

1947   Time & Tide 29 Nov. 1269/2   The despair and cynicism that followed what it has now become fashionable to call World War One.

A First Taxonomic Description of Coffee (1713)

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The beneficial effects of "coffee" had been  known in Ethiopia, and Arabia, and Persia, and Syria, and Turkey, long before it was used and enjoyed in the West. where coffee didn't make a strong appearance until the 17th century.  Evidently, though it took nearly another hundred years for the first taxonomic description to appear. That was the work of  Antoine de Jussieu (1686-1750) , and his effort appeared tucked away in a short article "Histoire du Cafe"in the scientific journal Memoires de l'Academie des Sciences in 1713. 

The Jussieu is a coffee incunable in the Western world. It was described as "The first recorded taxonomic description of coffee...described a coffee plant from the botanical garden of Amsterdam as “Jasminum arabicanum, lauri folio, cujus femen apudnos coffee decir” in 1713 (“Arab jasmine, with laurel type leaves, the beans of which we can call coffee”)--(Wintgens, 2009, quoted by Caas Brazil, Coffee Taxonomy.) And although there isn't an exact reference to the place of publication from what I can determine this must be the source--the article also uses a quote from the paper that is directly from this paper, which I reproduce above.  The Jussieu paper was also described as  "The first botanical description of a coffee tree, under the nam Jasminum arabicanum...made in 1713 by A. de Jussieu, who studied a single plant originating from the botanic garden of Amsterdam." found in Charrier, A.; Berthaud, J.  "Botanical Classification of Coffee", (1985), found in Clifford, M. H.; Wilson, K. C. Coffee: Botany, Biochemistry and Production of Beans and Beverage, AVI Publishing, p. 14. A wiki article on Jussieu references this paper but in a 1739 Paris edition of the 1713.  The 11-page article is also illustrated by an engraving of the coffee tree:

Notes:

Missing the Colors that Are Not There (1835)

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2704

I don't know what there is in this engraving that speaks "color" to me when it should probably be just concerning itself with the blackness of its deep black (which for me is usually the case). Neither the blackness nor the dimensionality of the thing--it seems to give itself some height and depth at the same time--say anything louder than the representation of its missing colors, which we are clearly seeing nothing of in these wavelengths except that there really aren't any colors here outside of the beautiful black & white.  The contrast is certainly there (“There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.” Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers), especially in the corner bits, where on closer inspection the blackness is really more white than black. In any event, the print suggests "color" to me for no good reason, except perhaps that it looks very cold, and cold is suggestive of ice blue, and the good contrast for that is yellow. “The sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with base notes, or dark lake with the treble." so wrote Mr. Kandinsky, who saw colors in his sound, and who in the midst of things wrote four experimental pieces of theater based upon this observation, the first and perhaps most prominent of which was called "Yellow" (1909).  And that is why this old engraving seems "yellow" to me (and this without any benefit of synesthesia).

The image in question, from An Easy System of Astronomy, containing an explanation of the Moveable Planisphere, together with a selection of problems, maps &c, intended to either accompany the planisphere or may be used separately in schools. This little guy (14cm) was published in Philadelphia in 1835 and unfortunately does not make mention of any detail of the "planisphere" other than that there was one that could be used. (This is evidently relatively rare, with only two copies located in WorldCat/OCLC--Columbia and the National Observatory.) 

If there was an equal weight assigned to white and black, the white in the corner sections may well outweigh the black, which also happens to show the planet "Herschell". This was the first planet discovered since antiquity, and was done so by the Hannoverian Brit Friedrich Herschel, who found it in 1781 and who lived with its immediate fame for another 41 years until his death in 1822. Herschel, an enormous astronomical talent who also played and composed, proposed the planet be named  in fidelity "Georgium Sidus" after George III, though that name didn't stay on the planet longer than a quick shadow. The French astronomer Lalande (who could probably not for genetic /national reasons use the name for George) suggested the planet be named for the discoverer, "Herschell¹", which really wasn't that terribly popular though it did last for five or six decades, succumbing finally to Bode's suggestion of "Uranus". 

This is a folding illustration for the following, which here appears much larger than the thing is in its real life, standing as it does only about 5" (130mm) tall:

 

Notes

1.  From the entry "Uranus" from the Oxford English Dictionary:

1783   New Rev. Apr. 325   Notwithstanding Mr. Herschel's having named his planet the Georgium Sidus, Mr. Lalande persists in calling it the Herschel, Mr. Bode proposes Uranus, Mr. Sivry Cybele, and Mr. Prosperin, Neptune.

1802   O. G. Gregory Treat. Astron. 128   By some astronomers it is called Herschel, in honour of the discoverer; though among almost all foreigners, it has acquired the name of uranius, which it is likely to retain.

1830   Encycl. Metrop. III. 498/1   Both these appellations are, however, now nearly become extinct, that of Uranus being almost universally adopted

1860   D. Olmsted Mech. Heavens 267   Uranus was the remotest known planet..until the discovery of..Neptune.

1902   N. Amer. Rev. Aug. 225   Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are in too primal a state of fluidity and gaseousness to support life.

Found-Surreal Art, Elevated (London, 1876)

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The difference between first and third class in an elevated train seems to be (1) a chair with arms, (2) a taller hat, and (3) a big moustache.  Undoubtedly, there were actual creature comforts, though I suspect first class was meant to accommodate first-class people who would prefer not to be with not-first-class people, and enjoy the extension of that privilege in a comfortable seat.

What attracts me to this image is the way it rubs up against the accoutrements of modernity, looking like a piece of surrealist art.  Since the image was printed in 1876 this would be "found-Surrealist art" as the existence of non-representational art was still 35 years away and the man who basically created the Surreal movement in NYC in 1924--Andre Breton--wouldn't be born for another 20 years. In any event, this is what this looks like to me, a piece of unintentional, out-of-context art with no contemporary name.

 [Source, above and below: Scientific American, February 8, 1876.  The image above is a cross section of the image below.]

 

 

On Found-Poetry in a Work on Clouds by the Great Chemist, Michael Faraday (1827)

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Tucked away inside a volume of  The Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature,  and the Arts¹  is this short contribution by Michael Faraday. Faraday is not particularly well-known for a writerly style although in his huge output of papers and books he was a very effective communicator. I found in this article, "On a Peculiar Perspective Appearance of Aerial Light and Shade" , that he was really very elegant and perhaps even poetic in describing what I think are cloud shadows-- explaining the illusions created by cloud shadows, with the "aerial perspective" part perhaps not having to do with what is normally assumed to be the optical/painterly version of the term, although frankly I'm not sure.

This is the small woodcut that accompanies the three-page article, depicting the "rays" of light coming from a setting sun, which I think is charming in itself:

He writes:

"Although the appearance on this evening was exceedingly beautiful and rare, and the more striking from the absence to the observer of the sun or clouds, and the complete insulation of the phenomenon, yet by close observation upon other evenings, it was found that partial effects of the same kind were very common, and from the manner in which these could be observed the explanation above given fully confirmed."

And the wonderful closing sentence:

"All these phenomena with their variations were easily referrible to their causes and may be observed at almost any sun set in fine weather, but the effect of the first evening so similar in kind though so different in appearance was not again remarked. It is with a view of guarding persons who may observe the same effect against any mistake as to its origin that the appearance with its nature has been thus particularly described." 

I haven't read that much in Faraday, but this does seem to be a bit of a departure--in form and content--and so I thought I'd share it a bit.  

Notes:

1. The Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature,  and the Arts (of the Royal Society of Great Britain). London, printed by John Murray,  volume XXII, 1827; 8.5x5”, viii, 418 pp,, 3 engraved plates.  Other interesting contributions in the volume include:  (Thomas Young), "Practical Application of the Doctrine of Chances, as it regards the Subdivision of Risks (by a Correspondent)"; (Michael Faraday, signed "M.F." in the article), "On the Confinement of Dry Gases over Mercury", in the Miscellaneous Intelligence section, pp 220-221; John MacCulloch, "Observations on the Geological History of the Formation of Coal"; and these shorter notices from the "Miscellaneous Intelligence" section including  Wollaston "On Electro-Magnetic Rotation" and  Becquerel "On the Conducting Power of Metals for Electricity" pp 374-378.

A Staccato of Abbreviations and Finding a Mystery Where There Probably Isn't One

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2641  

I'm a fan of some sorts when I see a string of abbreviations, the writer writing for a sympathetic readership with at least a common interest in the subject, knowing that spelling everything out isn't quite necessary, especially if space is an issue.  On title pages this happens often with the academic heritage and awards of the author, as well as with quotes, which is where my staccato of abbreviations was found.

The "misunderstanding"  here occurs in the reference to the source of the quote, which has lead me to look at a number of different editions of various works by the author.  It seems that I am missing something big in finding the source of the quote, because it seems impossible that an attribution right there in the middle of the title page of one of the most significant scientific periodicals of the 19th century will surely not be incorrect.

First, the abbreviation for the origin of the quote ("Nec aranearum sane textus ideo melior quia ex se fila gignunt, nec noster
vilior quia ex alienis libamus ut apes.") starts out beautifully with "Just. Lips." followed by "Monit. Polit. lib. i. cap. 1."  

This is simply the name of the author and the work and page on which the quote is found:  initially I thought I was dealing with Justus Lipsius'¹ Politicorum sive civilis doctrinae libri sex : qui ad principatum maxime spectant. Additae notae auctiores, tum et De una religione liber..., printed at the Plantin Press in Leiden in 1589, book one (of the six books/sections comprising the work, or "libri sex"), chapter one.

I don't know the quote, and even though I have been working with the Philosophical Magazine for quite some time, I never had bothered to to it up until a few days ago, when I bumped into this question.  The thing is, the quote doesn't really appear in I/1--it does appear in the Additae Notae section at the end of the book, on page 463, referencing I/1 on page 12.

Then I figured out that this seemed to not be the correct book, although the quote was more-or-less placed correctly.  The "Monit" part of the extended abbreviations refers to Lipsius Monita et exempla politica : libri dvo, qui virtvtes et vitia principum spectant...²(1609), in which I did a text search for keywords and the quote but could not find it, which further confuses a matter that may not be confusing to someone more familiar with these works and era. 

It seems impossible that the Phil Mag would be in error here on the issue of referencing a great classic and that it must be that I'm just missing something,  and no doubt someone reading this will let me know.

In any event I thought I'd share this little ride I took on the back of this quote...which, by the way, along with the sentence preceding it, is quoted and translated  in  The Reception of Erasmus in the Early Modern Period, edited by Karl A. E. Enenkel (page 188. below):

Image source and full text at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/imgPiz59MiscellaneaOpal

 

Which in a sense is similar to the Newton/shoulders-of-giants quote, here the writers building upon that which has come before and making something different of it. 

Notes:

1.  Justus Lipsius  "...humanist and classical scholar...(Joost Lips, 1547–1606), described by his admiring correspondent Michel de Montaigne as one of the most learned men of his day (EssaysII.12), was the founding father of Neostoicism, a key component of European thought in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries..."--Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online))

2.  Lipsius' work can be seen here at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/ivstilipsimonita00lips

A Single-Page DSM? (1886)

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At the end of the 19th century it was recognized that international data collected on mental illness would be highly useful. Unfortunately there was no real possibility of applying a series of great common denominators to the vast majority of  mental illnesses--the classification of mental diseases lacked general consensus and clarity for not understanding the pathology of the disease, therefore having to fall back on classification according to symptology, which is open to interpretation, and individual experience, and occasional faith, with the apparent mental conditions judged by exterior behavior and appearance. This pamphlet below is the sum of the efforts of international institutions to come up with a plan for this classification that might make disparate data more refined and so more useful to communities around the world.  It seems as though this was done with a simplicity that was also useful, as there was a common language to describe those conditions that are marked for classification.  

Full text can be viewed of Yale's copy, here:https://archive.org/details/39002086346195.med.yale.edu   

Clark Bell. Report on Classification of Mental Diseases as a basis of international statistics of the insane, made to the Belgian Society of Mental Medicine. 23x15cm,  14pp. Wrappers. Provenance: Library of Congress Smithsonian Deposit (received in 1886) from Dr. Bell (with a tiny 1.5cm embossed stamp bearing his name and address at top-center front page).  I suspect that this is a separate printing of this article that appeared the Medico-Legal Journal, volume 4, 1886, as it has the same exact appearance--Bell was also the editor of that journal.  

And the classifications, which appeared on the last two pages of the document:

 

 

 

The Distance-to-Hospital Usage Law (1866)

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 Dr. Edward Jarvis (1803-1884) conducted a study¹ in 1866 to determine how much a factor distance from an "insane hospital" was in regards to people using the facility. It sounds like an obvious-enough question with a probably-obvious answer, but these things are really never so until someone actually looks at the data and extracts an answer. And so Dr. Jarvis performed this function, answering the question once and for all that yes, indeed, the further away you are from a facility the less likely you are going to be to use it, and thus we have Jarvis' Law.

"Mental health researchers have long considered the importance of distance on psychiatric service use. Systemic analyses regarding the relationship between distance and the use of mental health care can be traced back to the mid nineteenth century, when Edward Jarvis identified inverse associations between home-to-hospital distance and the rates of admission to Oneida County Hospital of New York and the Kentucky Lunatic Asylum in Fayette County. He claimed that people living near psychiatric hospitals send more patients there for admission than do those living far away (Jarvis’s law).The study also revealed urban–rural differences in the prevalence of insanity, and high admission rates to psychiatric hospitals among people residing near the city center. Jarvis’s law has been identified in numerous studies since the mid-twentieth century."--Kuon-Chiao Tseng, et al, "Travel Distance and the Use of Inpatient Care among Patients with Schizophrenia", Adm Policy Ment Health. 2008 Sep; 35(5): 346–356, published online 2008 May 30

Notes:

1. Edward Jarvis, M.D.  "Influence of Distance from and Nearness to an Insane Hospital on its Use by the People."  Published by Separately printed from the American Journal of Insanity, XXII, January 1866, pp 361-406. This publication paginated 1-46. (1866).  

Extraterrestrial Views of the Sun, 1870-1875

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2615

This beautiful illustration displays the 1774 sunspot theory of Alexander Wilson (1714-1786) of the University of Glasgow, who hypothesized that they were "holes" in the surface of the sun.  The holes or cavities (A and B in this case) were an opening in the shining brilliance of the supposed surface of the sun, and revealing the true surface of the sun underneath the floating layer. This image is found in Amedee Guillemin's The Sun (1870 and 1875), found in Google Books/Hathi Trust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433057659199;page=root;seq=224;view=plaintext;size=100;orient=0)   

• Wilson, Alexander (1774) "Observations on Solar Spots", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 64, part I.

'Others,' continues Cassini, 'have imagined that the centre of the Sun is an opaque dark nucleus, entirely covered by luminous fluid matter; that in this opaque body there exist volcanoes similar to Vesuvius and Etna, which throw out, from time to time, masses of bituminous matter, which find their way to the surface of the Sun, where they produce the effect of spots, in the same manner that a new island was formed in the Archipelago near Santorin and another near the Azores; that this bituminous matter is altered or decomposed by that which covers the surface and which gradually consumes or dissolves it, forming those nebulosities and transformations which are remarked in the spots; the latter disappearing when this bituminous matter is completely consumed or destroyed; that they appear again, however, at the same points of the solar disc, when the volcanoes throw up another lot of bituminous matter."

 

 And just for good measure (and from the same source) here is an unusual comparison of what the Sun looks like from the surface of eight planets as well as asteroid Feronia (which I imagine must be the asteroid 72 Feronia discovered by CHF Peters in 1861) and from "Maximillian", which I have to admit escapes me.  The interesting part here is that "Maximillian" and Feronia and Sylvia and Flora are all named in images or data boxes but are not mentioned or identified in the text, which means that they were known well enough in 1870 to not need any explanation, and were simply a part of a popular astronomical conversation on minor planets and asteroids.  I'm not sure what the minor planet count was in 1875 or so but today the number is nearly 500,000 (numbered), of which about 20,000 have names.

 

And also the following, listing "Flora" and "Sylvia" in a planets list though they are 8 Flora and 87 Sylvia, asteroids in the main asteroid belt:

And the frontispiece, which names the Sun very non-marginally, as though it needed such an identifier:

Source: Amedee Guillemin's The Sun (1870 and 1875), found in Google Books/Hathi Trust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433057659199;page=root;seq=224;view=plaintext;size=100;orient=0)   

 

 

"Bring Rome in Your Home"--Fascist Women of Italy Radio Broadcasts, 1937

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2603

[Source: Women of Imperial Italy, by Alice Seelye Rossi; printed in Rome, 1937.]

Not anymore. Probably not so much in 1937, though I am sure that the picture of the "fascist" in the "fascist Woman" was prettier and rosier than what people would come to know by 1942.  In 1937, when this pamphlet was published, the "women" were broadcasting far and wide--one aspect of radio propaganda from the Fascists in Italy, a hearts-and-minds attempt at a part of the coercion of Italia imperiale that occupied the years 1935 until the end of the war. By 1937 Mussolini's National Fascist Party (in power since 1922) had extended itself by occupying Libya and by invading Ethiopia; Albania, Greece, and Yugoslavia would come between 1939-1941, as would France, when Italy entered the war in 1940 and entered into the country at the tail-end of the German invasion. So the broadcast heard here in 1937 was the beginning of Italy looking for the "Fourth Shore", and deep into Mussolini's Fascist state. (Ezra Pound would also do his level best to look the part of traitor that he was, lobbying the Italians for years before being allowed to get on the air to broadcast to the Allies on his misunderstood and inscrutable economics, vicious and virulent anti-Semitism (offhandedly addressing the U.S. president as "Franklin Delano Jewfeld/Jewsevelt"), and general attempts to tell the U.S. population to not support the war effort against the Fascists and that instead they should be down on their knees praising Mussolini, who he saw as another Thomas Jefferson. And so on.)  

I've shared the few pages in this brief pamphlet on the Fascist Woman as it appears in the pamphlet. For the great majority of people living in the U.S., Europe, Great Britain,  Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and many other places, the idea of the "fascist" would change dramatically in about a year, and then spin its grinding way downward until the start of the war in 1939. 

 

 

 

On The Flood, Comets, and a Recantation (1823-1831)

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2592

I pulled a volume at random of the Annals of Philosophy from the shelves--it was volume VI (new series) from 1823. Trying to think of what might be a hot-button issue (in English) for that year, I started flipping through the pages, reading the page headers: Humboldt on volcanoes, Beaufoy's astronomical observations, Mr. Moyle on the temperature of mines, Prevost on the blood, Pond on some astronomical topic, Ramond on the barometer, book reviews, scientific society announcements, and so on. Nothing really drew me in--until in the back, at page 344, this running header: "Prof. Henslow on the Deluge". That was a "something" that I was looking-but-not-looking-for.  

This was a late-ish contribution to the history of the geology of the Great Flood, and in it, John Henslow (a great naturalist and botanist, 1796-1861) postulates that the flood was caused by the near-passing of a comet that disintegrated and contributed its enormous aequeous "nebulae" to the Earth's atmosphere producing the Noachic flood.  He quickly sites a contemporary (one of many), William Buckland¹, in this, who was one of the late leaders in the geological response to the flood, and who theorized a natural history of the flood and a production of an Ice Age.  The belief that there was some scientific basis in the divinely-induced flood was buoyed by the general flavor of the mythology of the flood, which turns up in more than 100 cultures--so part of the Noahic flood argument as being true is the broad cultural base for it. Commonality across cultures like this doesn't necessarily make something real--there are many many parallels between the Bible and other sacred books besides this, like for example the savior descending into Hell for three days before resurrection, and that in stories that precede the New Testament. So common story bases make them popular, though not necessarily correct.

So Henslow thinks about the comet in a long tradition of Genesis geology, like Buffon and his comet. But what is more interesting to me in this issue is another contemporary, Reverend Adam Sedgwick, Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge University, who at the end of several decades in theorizing on catastrophic flood geology decided that he had taken a wrong turn.  What happened then, in 1831, was a remarkable refutation of his earlier work. It was an enormous thing, a statement of real courage and conviction to the scientific process.  

Gears, Teeth, Minie Bullets, Cloth Bindings (1864)

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2575

Claude-Étienne Minié (1804-1879) was an influential military designer and French officer who designed what was to become know as the "Minie ball". This was a cylindrically-shaped conical-pointed bullet the design of which greatly increased fire at long ranges. The bullet was designed in 1847 and soon became standard issue in Europe and (especially?) in the U.S. during the Civil War.  I'm taking notice of these projectiles after having made this very accidental discovery of the machine that formed them in the Victorian review of technology and invention, Great Inventors, the Sources of their Usefulness and the Results of their Efforts, printed in London in the rockingly good year of 1864.  It makes me think about the fabulous machinery that produces stuff like bubble gum--glorious metallic ideas for production and packaging, all combined in effort to produce a piece of fluff that you chew on and then discard.  With the Minie Ball, though, you have a massively-geared machine used to produce little bits of metal meant to pass more efficiently and with more accuracy through a body. (Also it is another representative of a genre of illustration of looking at the object straight on.)  

 

The cover of the book is interesting in its own right, being bound in an elaborate publisher's cloth with gilt-stamped decorations.  Books before, say, 1800, were almost entirely bound according to the wishes of the customer, who would/could purchase the sheets and have them bound according to their wishes.  That, or booksellers would offer the book for sale in a small election of available bindings.  The cloth binding that we would recognize today really didn't start to make an appreciable appearance until the 1830s, when a simple cloth cover replaced its more-elaborate brethren, making things much easier for the publisher and the bookbinder, allowing for much less expensive production and a quicker turn-around time.  It also brought in a far greater distinction in the now-divergent industries of bookselling and publishing--and of course bookbinding.  So the entry of the semi-standard plain cloth binding also brought in the possibility for design and art in standard book production, with less to the introduction of the decorated cloth cover.  

The cover for the book described here comes from about the second full decade of a standardized-luxury of decoration in cloth-bound books.  Over the years I've paid only a little attention to the decorated cloth bindings of scientific books, but never collected them, something I somewhat regret at this point. In any event, Great Inventors... is a good example of a relatively inexpensive but nicely-designed book cover.  

The Illogical in Pursuit of a Logical End--a Note on the Snark.

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2537

   "Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
          As he landed his crew with care;
     Supporting each man on the top of the tide
          By a finger entwined in his hair."

So opens the semi- and fully-immortal The Hunting of the Snark. an Agony in Eight Fits, by the fully-and-not-partially-immortal Lewis Carroll, which (if it can said what the book is about) is about eight guys whose professions all begin with a letter "b" plus a beaver in search of a Snark.   In the second of eight Fits that comprise this lyrically nonsensical poem, we encounter a map of the route of possibilities taken by the group, this being in the charge of the Bellman. This is not only the finest map illustrating a Fit that exists, it is also (as I've stated earlier in this blog) one of the most beautiful maps ever published. It is a beautiful map of nothing, showing nothing, and marking the route of nothing.  Perfect for the Snark story.

The Bellman himself they all praised to the skies-
Such a carriage, such ease and such grace!
Such solemnity too! One could see he was wise,
The moment one look in his face!

He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when the found it to be
A map they could all understand.

"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply,
"They are merely conventional signs!

"Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we've got our brave Captain to thank"
(So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best-
A perfect and absolute blank!"

Sometimes there is nothing so fine as something that beautifully illustrates the nothing that isn’t there, and this lovely map, unencumbered of all of the elements and details that define the mapness of something,  perfectly explains the origin of its need.

The Snark evidently occurred to Carroll while he was out walking on one bright summer day, on a hillside--actually, it was one line of poetry, and it wound up being the closely line of the book.

  In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
          In the midst of his laughter and glee,
     He had softly and suddenly vanished away—-
          For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

                   THE END

So we had those eight guys and a beaver, setting out from points unknown and going to places not seen.  

This was all started by that string of poetry that entered Carroll's head on his walk.  He didn't know what it meant, and didn't know where it was going; he did however set out to figure it out for himself.  ("I know not what it meant, the; I know not what it means, now..."¹) I find it such a lovely thing that Carroll would spend so much time trying to retrieve the intellectual evidence of where this line came from.  And what his investigation revealed was The Hunting of the Snark.  And at the end of the day, Carroll was no closer to knowing what a Snark was, in spite of all of the writing and commentary and criticism.  Throughout the rest of his life Carroll insisted that he didn't know what the poem meant, though it could have meant something.  It was supposed to have been a work of nonsense and illogic, but I think it fits with the rest of his work on nonsense and the logic of it, so my best guess is that there was nothing quite so logically in his works as the reach of the illogical in pursuit of a logical end.  

• Full text of the Snark, here, via Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13/13-h/13-h.htm  Also a pdf with illustrations:  http://www.archive.org/stream/huntingofsnarkan00carruoft#page/n27/mode/2up

Notes:

1.  This line occurs in Morton Chase's Lewis Carroll, a Biography, published by Macmillan in 1995, p 404.