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“Spirit Writing”: Electric, Script-Writing Telegraph, 1879 (!!)
JF Ptak Science Books Post 2295 This fine bit of welcome-to-the-future technology appeared in the notice “A Real Telegraph”, in Nature, 6 February 1879. It is a quick report on the invention,...
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A Rare Technical Report on the V-1, 1945, Published in Newly-Liberated Paris
JF Ptak Science Books Post 2304 The eyes of top-ranking Nazis must have popped when they saw this work by Henri Moreau (1893-1978) and Paul Chovin. It is a fairly technical paper on the V-1, the...
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“Render the Light Soft and Cool”–Found Poetical Bits in Scientific...
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post I have seen many thousands of pages in the populist hard-science journal, Nature, from its opening volume in 1869 through WWII–at least those are what I have in the...
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The Accidental Absurdist: the Conformator, 1878
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post Here’s another classic of ingenuity mixed with out-of-context accidental absurdist visualisations: the classic (I think) “hat conformator” from the Scientific American...
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Human-Powered Flight of an Antique Nature, 1893
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post “A Light and Simple Motor” is the title for this short article in Scientific American (February 11, 1893). It is the work of Theodore A. Stark of Ottawa, Illinois,...
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The Kingdom of Fingers
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post “The Fingers as an Aid in Multiplication” is another wonderful find coming from a general browse in the great Scientific American (October 22, 1898, page 265). It is...
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Books are Weapons in the War of Ideas
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen” (“Where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people”).–Almansor, Heinrich Heine....
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Immigration Map 1903–a Great Display of Data
JF Ptak Science Books Post 2113 This map is an interesting early attempt to embed complex statistical information into map form. It shows us the countries of origin of new immigrants to each state and...
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Map of the Information Dirt Road, 1971
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post [Source: An Atlas of Cyberspace. See also Mappa Mundi for a good article on the 1980 version of this map, here.] I can feel the enormous hail coming down on me right...
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Anti-Gravity Anti-Gravitas
JF Ptak Science Books Post 2318 “Similitude of Substance will cause Attraction, where the Body is wholly freed from the Motion of Grauity.”– Bacon, Sylua Syluarum, 1626 It seems that in variations...
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Steampunk Air Travel, 1843
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post “Let no man seek / Henceforth to be foretold what shall befall / Him or his children.Milton,” Paradise Lost XI, 770-72 George Cruikshank–the gifted English...
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On the Power of Numerical Discrimination, 1871
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post I’ve written a number of posts on this site about W. Stanley Jevons, a very talent all-around smart-guy who worked in many different fields and at very high levels....
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Popular Atomic- and Nuclear-Named Stuff, Mostly Bomb-Related
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post Below are 66 examples of Cold War era stuff and consumer bits relating to atomic/nuclear weapons. All are found in my pinterest page, here....
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The “Jap Crow” Experiment: Against Japanese Internment, 1943
JF Ptak Science Books Post 2325 Here’s an unpopular opinion for 1943: close the Japanese internment camps. The Roosevelt administration’s Executive Order 9066 was the legal bombshell that gave the...
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A Good Example of a Bad Map, 1867
JF Ptak Science Books Post 2327 When I had an open shop I almost always maintained an antique map/print part in the front,airy, high-ceiling space and had my hardcore science stock in the back....
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The Small Story of Animal Glue, and other Small Stories
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post In my collections of small collections I have a collection of small unusual pamphlets that tell the story of something uncommon. Everything in this sub-collection...
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Verticals, War, Reims
JF Ptak Science Books In developing a history of vertical lines I thought that I would look at single vertical lines, but having just stumbled across this in our WWI News Photo Service archive, I...
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The Future: Floating, Shining Soot and a SteampunkGod (1834)
JF Ptak Science Books Post 2340 [This is a version of an article recently published in the Mensa Bulletin.] The world of possibility is limitless when there are no limits and almost no...
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Diagrams of Outsider Logic, with Synesthesic Angels (1925)
JF Ptak Science Books Post 2341 (Poster Series 5) [A cleaned-and-colorized 13x19" version of this cover design is available in the new Posters section of this blog.] There are some other more recent...
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Alan Turing and How the Chicken Gets Inside the Egg
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post The most influential book in the young life of Alan Turing is said to be What Every Child Should Know Library–it is a six volume work1, and it seems as though the...
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