Colossus in the Colosseum ift.tt/oYSDkj9
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Here's an interesting combination of sweat and electricity--an enormous electrical device that was on display in an exhibit of "natural magic" at the Colosseum in Regent's Park in 1839. The …
8
Birds and Human Flight ift.tt/MQgOZlE
JF Ptak Science Books Overall Post 5154
For thousands of years the most popular fuel of the common idea for humans to achieve flight was through the application of bird flight mechanics. (The other common vehicle employed bal…
3
Cross-Section of an Arctic-Exploring Balloon, 1890 ift.tt/Kzm7DPY
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post Overall Post 5153
Answering the great North Call, to reach the North Pole, has been a quest for hundreds of explorers reaching back hundreds of years The image here d…
2
26
The Goubet Submarine, 1886 ift.tt/ElH870d
JF Science Books Quick Post Overall Post #5152
Charles Goubet designed an interesting and technically advanced submersible boat, an electrically-powered submarine, which was the first of its kind to be powered in this way. …
5
A Monumental and Fantastically Bad Idea: Lowering the Mediterranean (1929) ift.tt/KSrOiuT
JF Ptak Science Books (This is a slight expansion of an earlier post from 2011)
"Simply the thing I am shall make me live."--from Jorge Luis Borges, "Shakespeare’s Memory"
…
Two Uncommon Crowd Scenes, 1932 and 1945. ift.tt/EweRPWM
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post (Overall Post 5152)
It seems to me that these two photos may be of some interest to folks given how utterly jammed the scenes are with people and that their sources are prett…
1
Mathematical Exercises and Found Art ift.tt/4nkJxp2
JF Ptak Science Books
In my science bookstore business one of my principle interests is antique manuscript notebooks in the sciences. It is a pleasure to see someone working through a problem, or finding what the w…
Bridges Never Built: the Hudson River Bridge (Midtown) 1896 ift.tt/TFC7IR0
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post (Overall post 5151)
This beauty appears in the pages of Scientific American for 1896, and discusses a proposal for a bridge to connect Manhattan to Jersey, …
An Episode in Antiquarian Depiction of Upside Down Things (1506) ift.tt/8MB7pom
JF Ptak Science Books Overall Post 5150
The subject of this woodcut is well out of my range, even on a better-than-beyond-my-means day, but the imagery is very sharp, and contrasting, a…
New York City in Danger of Attack (1917) ift.tt/0iBTAre
JF Ptak Science Books Overall post 5149
The New York City harbor looks pretty rough in this picture, tall whitecaps with surprising little reflected in what should be pretty choppy water, meaning that light sh…
Found-Art in Scientific Journals: an Acoustic Kraken! (1881) ift.tt/0HsNwvE
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
This does for a moment look like a piece of Found Scientific Art--and I guess it is--reminding me of a multiply-layered steely jaw of some creature, which y…
A Scientific/Industrial Vision of the Future City (1842) ift.tt/WpIFPmb
JF Ptak Science Books
Amedee Couder wrote L'Architecture et l'industrie comme moyen de perfection sociale, a fine work that was published in Paris (by Brockhaus et Avenarius) in 1842.1 The wo…
Glass Globes, Light, and Volcanoes (1898) ift.tt/RrTIYUy
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
I happened upon these lovely technical drawings --in plan and cross section--of the newly-patented Holophane Globe. The inventors and coiners of the Holophane were French scien…
The Terrible Situation of Ukrainian "Displaced Persons" at the End of WWII ift.tt/Ycsr5Ah
JF Ptak Science Books
The pamphlet Plight of Ukrainian DPs : a few typical letters of many being received daily from Europe describing the tragic plight of Ukrainian displaced…
A Really, Really Greater New York--Filling in the East River, Redux. ift.tt/Bf9hVYn
JF Ptak Science Books Old Post 1470 expanded and updated.
Eleven years ago on this blog (May 2011) I wrote about the fantastical idea of Dr. T. Kennard Thomson for expanding NYC l…
Uncommon Photo of the Surrender of the German Fleet, 1918 ift.tt/3q1RCCi
JF Ptak Science Books Overall Post 5148
This is a photograph of the surrender of the German high seas fleet at the Firth of Forth (Scotland), 21 November 1918. The image was undoubtedly made f…
Patriotic Snow Parade, 1917/1918 ift.tt/3yyE98J
JF Ptak Science Books Overall Post 5147
This news photo service image--stamped "Hearst-Pathe News Agency" on the back--is from the winter of 1917/1918 and shows a patriotic snow parade somewhere in the United Stat…
Words, Deeds, and Henry Ford (1927) ift.tt/3EMBKth
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post Overall Post 5146
So, the Dearborn Independent was owned and published by Ford beginning in 1920 and rose to a circulation of 900,000 issues a day, the second-leading circulation …
The Beauty of a Hexadecimal Tonal System (1863) ift.tt/3dC6EJ8
JF Ptak Science Books Overall Post 5145
John Nystrom's “A New System of Arithmetic and Metrology, called the Tonal System”1 (1863) is a very early entry in the history of the application of the hexadeci…
The Costs of Television Sets, 1946 ift.tt/3dF5sVj
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post Overall Post 5149
Q: "What kinds of programs will there be on television?
A: "All kinds" ("The commercials will be unlike radio.")
I was initially attracted to this oversized pam…
