History

A trip down (microfilm) memory lane

IBM’s 1890 data tabulator reading census data cards with pools of toxic mercury?  Robotic data storage on microfilm?  A US defense computer kept alive by Russian vacuum tubes?  And much more!  In the BBC News video Computer Dinosaurs.  Some seriously, awesomely cool stuff from early computing days.

Posted by George on 05/02/08 at 07:54 AM
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Candorville on Offense

The main character in ’Candorville‘ is Lemont, a cartoonist living in modern times.  Incensed by the Secret Service decision to stop screening the crowd for weapons at an Obama rally in Dallas (of all places) he decides to travel back in time to 1865 to persuade a cartoonist named Thomas Nast to advocate for better security for Abraham Lincoln.  Nast agrees, but is shot down by his editor:
image

Thomas Nast… hadn’t I heard that name somewhere?  Turns out I had, in my dim memories of college history.  If you click his name link above, you’ll probably recognize some of his cartoons - they’re all over the history books.

(You can read the rest of the Lamont-Nast story at the Candorville link, for a while at least.  Comic sites usually keep stuff up for about a month.)

Posted by George on 03/29/08 at 12:46 PM
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Pearl Harbor day, forgotten

I have related this story before in various places so forgive me if you’ve heard it before.  If memory serves this is the first time written it as a separate post.

It was maybe 10 years ago on Pearl Harbor day and I was in a donut shop for coffee and a donut.  Three were newspapers strewn about featuring interviews with veterans and showing the Arizona in flames.  The owner of the shop was discussing the Pearl Harbor attack and the war that followed, with one of the other customers.  Her high-school aged employee was listening in.  Suddenly she made a connection:

“Wait a minute!” she said, “We… we dropped a BOMB on JAPAN?!!!”

It would be accurate to say a “moment of silence” ensued, while her boss and the customer struggled to think of an appropriate answer…

Posted by George on 12/07/07 at 02:16 PM
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It’s Darwin day, too

On this day in 1809, were born two men; Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.  Each left the world a different, and better place.

What if the Beagle had sundered upon the rocks?  Others were working on the same questions.  The discovery would still have been made, sometime.  But Darwin carried the burden with care, and compassion for the upset it caused.  His life is well worth reading about. 

Posted by George on 02/12/07 at 06:04 AM
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Great art and a difficult problem

WPA murals are a fabulous window into American art and culture of the time.  They adorn post offices, hospitals, high schools - public buildings all over the country.  Some of them contain messages everyone can agree on, but the one at the EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C. is a tough pill to swallow.  Even if white/Indian relations were not a political sore spot, a Guernica-style massacre is hardly the decoration one might want in a government office.

So, waddya think?  Leave it up?  Knock it down?.  Wouldn’t that be revisionist history?  Or…
(from ***Dave)

Posted by George on 07/15/06 at 09:48 AM
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Flood of racism

I just got ‘round to watching the PBS American Experience episode “Fatal Flood”, taped a couple weeks ago.  It was an amazing, intricate story that left me pondering.  Here’s the oversimplified version…

Continued...

Posted by George on 12/03/05 at 12:08 PM
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Thumbnail sketch of Charles Darwin
And here are the artifacts of his life: his tiny single-shot pistol, his magnifying glass and rock hammer—and the Bible that traveled around the world with him, a reminder that before his voyage he had been studying for the ministry. (Indeed, in a letter to his father, who opposed the trip, he listed all the latter’s objections, starting with “disreputable to my character as a clergyman hereafter.” Little did he imagine)...
- MSNBC/Newsweek: Evolution of a scientist

MSNBC delivers a Newsweek article on the life of Charles Darwin; the misunderstood, much-maligned scientist who carried the burden of discovery about our origins to places he feared to tread.  It’s a good article - I clicked on the “Print this” link to read it as I find split-up pages annoying.

From Socialist Swine

Posted by George on 11/20/05 at 09:26 AM
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Pombal for head of FEMA

Here is why I’d like to see news media hire history majors instead of “Journalism” majors - it would give them perspective on current events:

Modern disaster relief traces back to Lisbon, Portugal in 1755, when that city was flattened by an estimated 8.7 earthquake and tsunami on All-Saints day.  Essentially still a medaeval city, Lisbon was so thoroughly destroyed that the king simply fled, never again to live under a solid roof.  The monarchy never fully recovered from the disaster.

New Scientist magazine describes what happened next:

It was left to the king’s practical chief minister, the bewigged aristocrat Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo (later the marquis of Pombal) to take control. Reportedly, when the king asked, “What shall we do?” Pombal answered, “Bury the dead and feed the living.”

If Lisbon was the first modern disaster, Pombal was the first to implement modern disaster relief. Concerned about the spread of disease from decomposing bodies, he had the tens of thousands of corpses put on barges that were taken out to sea and sunk. He charged the army with delivering food to the city. To prevent looting and to keep people from fleeing into overcrowded areas, anyone entering or leaving the city required a pass. He gave judges the power to convict, sentence and hang looters on the spot. To prevent profiteering he fixed food prices, removed taxes on fish and took possession of all construction materials. Ships were not allowed to leave the harbour with goods that might be needed for the relief effort. Although the homeless population now lived in tents, Pombal made it illegal for landlords to evict their tenants, so that people could eventually return home. He also demanded that the clergy stop preaching that the “end of days” was near...

Pombal went on to direct the rebuilding of Lisbon:

Continued...

Posted by George on 10/23/05 at 08:19 PM
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Hiroshima, 60 years ago

My father held The Bomb affectionately at arm’s length.  While he was pretty certain that - on balance - it had saved both Japanese and American lives (including those of his fellow servicemen), he was simply appalled by the carnage it packaged into a single shell. 

Like everyone of my generation, I grew up under its radioactive shadow.  As children, we could not eat snow because of the fallout from nuclear tests.  We practiced “duck ‘n cover”.1 A couple of my friends’ families had elaborate underground fallout shelters in their back yards. 

Starting with John Hersey’s Hiroshima, I wound up reading books about the nuclear weapons industry, the politics of Mutually Assured Destruction, the physiology of radiation sickness and flash burns, and how the bombs are made.  At one point in high school, I considered an apprenticeship program for welding for nuclear facilities, with an eye to working at the Hanford facility (which is now mostly shut down.)

It’s fascinating stuff, if you can suspend judgement long enough to learn about it.  In my reading, I’ve only scratched the surface.

But what about the bombing?

A lot of people are naive about the carnage wrought by conventional bombing in WWII.  It’s as if they think that it’s somehow more horrible to die in an atomic bombing than a conventional one.  For the victim, there probably isn’t that much difference.  The difference in horror, if any, is abstract; something for us to debate in following years. 

Continued...

Posted by George on 08/06/05 at 03:42 PM
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