THE ELECTRIFYING PROSPECT

“I know histhry isn’t thrue, Hinnissy, because it ain’t like what I see ivry day in Halsted Street. If any wan comes along with a histhry iv Greece or Rome that’ll show me th’ people fightin’, gettin’ dhrunk, makin’ love, gettin’ married, owin’ th’ grocery man an’ bein’ without hard coal, I’ll believe they was a Greece or Rome, but not befur.” — Dunne, Finley Peter, OBSERVATIONS BY MR. DOOLEY, New York, 1902 HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1681

In Rhode Island families were depending upon resinous pine wood for lighting the interiors of their homes at night. They were fashioning this material into sticks of convenient length, which they were referring to as “Candelles” (candles).1 A story spread in Providence, that they were about to be deprived, by someone, of the “Great Benniffitt yt they haue had by there pitchwood for Candell light”: There is a bruite abroade that some person or persons are Determined to propagate the runing of Tarr from pitchwood; As also of pitchwood to make Coale: The Towne Well weighing ye premises, & Considering ye Great damage which will Accrew in Case such a designe be put in Execution, see Cause the same timely to prevent; And doe hereby declare against, and forbid any persons from this day forward to make any Coale of pitchwood, or runn any Tarr from pitchwood, or be a procurer or employer of any so to do, (Except it be to ye quantety of Tenn Gallons for his own proper use, and he being an Inhabetant of this Towne,) and All ye Tarr and Coale soe made shall be fforfit, one halfe thereof unto ye informer, and ye other halfe unto ye Towne Treasurey: The which shall be seized either by a warrant from any one of Majestrates or by order from ye Towne. And that the sayd person or persons who make ye sayd Tarr & Coales, and theire imployers and procureres for Each Defect, from time to time shall forfitt Each of them ye sum of ffifty shillings and if any person or persons whatsoever shall remoue, desspose of or Conveye away any Tarr or Coales that thereby ye seasure thereof might be obstructed, or shall be instrumentall to ye propagateing of the same, Each person soe offending, shall from time to time for Each Defect fortfitt ye sum of Tenn pounds in mony, which shall be recovered by a due Course of Law; one Third part of which ffort1iture shall be to ye Informer, and ye other two parts shall be to ye Towne Treasurey. And this order to stand in force any former Act or Clawes therein by our towne at any time made to ye Contrarey here of in any wise not withstanding. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

The town voted that “a Coppie of this order about pitchwood be sett up in some publick place of this Towne.”2

YOU WILL UNDERSTAND MY GREEN-LETTER COMMENTARIES SUCH AS THIS ONE, AS SOON AS YOU GRASP THAT YOU ARE DEALING HERE WITH A COMMITTED BERGSONIAN. IN 1922 IN PARIS, WHEN ALBERT EINSTEIN AND HENRI-LOUIS BERGSON FACED OFF OVER THE NATURE OF TIME, EINSTEIN CONSIDERED BERGSON’S CONCEPTION OF TIME TO BE UNSCIENTIFIC, AMOUNTING TO A MERE PIECE OF SUBJECTIVITY,

1. Of course there were also candles fashioned from tallow, which might be fitted into candlesticks made of brass or of iron — but this would have been somewhat more expensive. 2. We trust that someone would be able to decypher the spelling on this broadside, and make out its intent: that it was not as problematic as a sign I once saw posted at the entrance to a public library, “GUIDE DOGS FOR THE BLIND ONLY.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY WHEREAS BERGSON CONSIDERED EINSTEIN’S CONCEPTION OF TIME TO BE UNSCIENTIFIC, AMOUNTING TO A MERE PIECE OF PRESUMPTUOUS ILL-CONSIDERED METAPHYSICS. ILYA PRIGOGINE WOULD POINT OUT THAT “IT IS TRUE THAT BERGSON HAD NOT UNDERSTOOD EINSTEIN. BUT IT IS ALSO TRUE THAT EINSTEIN HAD NOT UNDERSTOOD BERGSON. BERGSON WAS FASCINATED BY THE ROLE OF CREATIVITY, OF NOVELTY IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE. BUT EINSTEIN DID NOT WANT ANY DIRECTED TIME. HE REPEATED OFTEN THAT TIME, MORE PRECISELY THE ARROW OF TIME, IS AN ‘ILLUSION.’ SO, THESE IDEOLOGIES SEEM TO BE IRRECONCILABLE.” AS LONG AS YOU ARE TRAPPED IN THE ILL-CONSIDERED EINSTEINIAN MINDSET, TRAPPED BY THE PRESUMPTUOUS ILL-CONSIDERED METAPHYSICS OF SPURIOUS METAPHORS THAT HAD TRAPPED HIS GREAT MIND — YOU WILL HAVE NO CLUE WHATEVER WHAT I AM RANTING AT YOU ABOUT. RATHER THAN BEING OF THE OPINION OF BOETHIUS, WHO WROTE IN 523AD THAT GOD, BEING ETERNAL, MUST BE “OUTSIDE” TIME AND ABLE TO VIEW THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE AS INDIFFERENTLY AND UNCHANGINGLY PRESENT IN HIS ONE WHOLE CREATION, I AM OF THE OPINION OF MAIMONIDES, WHO WROTE IN THE 12TH CENTURY THAT ACCORDING TO THE TALMUD FREE WILL IS GRANTED TO EVERY PERSON BY GOD SO THAT WE MAY BE JUDGED ACCORDING TO OUR ACTIONS. AS GERSONIDES POINTED OUT IN THE 14TH CENTURY, THERE ARE DECIDED LIMITS TO FOREKNOWLEDGE, AS GOD CANNOT KNOW IN ADVANCE WHICH CHOICE A FREE INDIVIDUAL, IN HIS OR HER FREEDOM, WILL MAKE: “I HAVE SET BEFORE YOU LIFE AND DEATH, BLESSING AND CURSE: THEREFORE CHOOSE LIFE.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1745

October 11, Friday (Old Style): The jurist and Lutheran cleric Ewald Jurgens von Kleist, Bishop of Pomerania, devised a “Kleistian” glass apparatus by which he was able to “store” static electricity in significant quantities. He had coated the glass on the inside and on the outside with a layer of metal foil cemented to the glass, and his jar had 2 electrodes at its top, one connected to the outside foil and the other to the inside foil. This would come to be known as a Leyden jar, or Leiden jar, because experiments would be conducted at Leyden University in Leiden, Germany. Later such a device would be referred to as a “condenser” because it is able to “condense” or “concentrate” the static charge, or as a “capacitor” because it has a “capacity” or “capability” of storing an electric charge (the term “capacitor” is preferred, since the unit of “capacitance” is the “farad,” so named in honor of Michael Faraday, equal to one “coulomb,” so named in honor of Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, per “volt,” so named in honor of Alessandro Volta — shockingly, here we can be found guilty of having awarded credit where credit is due).

I AM A NEGATIVE PHILOSOPHER, NOT A POSITIVE ONE: PHILOSOPHY NOT BEING ANY SORT OF SCIENCE, I WOULD HOLD THAT ANY PHILOSOPHICAL ASSERTION THAT TRAVELS UNDER THE PRETENSE THAT IT IS FACTUAL AND ACTUAL MUST BE, TO THE CONTRARY, NECESSARILY SPURIOUS AND UNSUBSTANTIATED. A GOOD EXAMPLE IS THE OFT-HEARD SUPPOSITION “GOD KNOWS THE FUTURE.” AS A NEGATIVIST I NEGATE ANY AND ALL SUCH ASSERTIONS. THAT DOES NOT REQUIRE ME TO REPLACE THESE PSEUDOFACTUAL PHILOSOPHICAL ASSERTIONS WITH MY OWN COUNTERCLAIMS, SUCH AS A POSITIVE ASSERTION THAT IN ORDER TO ALLOW FOR FREE WILL AND FREEDOM OF DECISION “GOD CANNOT KNOW THE FUTURE.” I DO NOT INTEND TO TAKE YOUR GRITTY, GRIMY TEDDY BEAR AWAY FROM YOU AND PRESENT YOU WITH A CUTE CUDDLY PANDA. I WILL TAKE AWAY YOUR TEDDY LEAVING YOU EMPTY-ARMED. I HAVE SAID THAT RATHER THAN BEING OF THE OPINION OF BOETHIUS, WHO WROTE IN 523AD THAT GOD, BEING ETERNAL, MUST BE “OUTSIDE” TIME AND ABLE TO VIEW THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE AS INDIFFERENTLY AND UNCHANGINGLY PRESENT IN HIS ONE WHOLE CREATION, I AM INCLINED TO THE OPINION OF MAIMONIDES, WHO WROTE IN THE 12TH CENTURY THAT ACCORDING TO THE TALMUD FREE WILL IS GRANTED TO EVERY PERSON BY GOD SO THAT WE MAY BE JUDGED ACCORDING TO OUR ACTIONS. AS GERSONIDES POINTED OUT IN THE 14TH CENTURY, THERE ARE DECIDED LIMITS TO HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY FOREKNOWLEDGE, AS GOD CANNOT KNOW IN ADVANCE WHICH CHOICE A FREE INDIVIDUAL, IN HIS OR HER FREEDOM, WILL MAKE: “I HAVE SET BEFORE YOU LIFE AND DEATH, BLESSING AND CURSE: THEREFORE CHOOSE LIFE.” HOWEVER, I WAS LYING WHEN I SAID THAT. ACTUALLY I HAVE NO PREFERENCE FOR THE PSEUDOPHILOSOPHICAL RANTINGS OF MAIMONIDES AND GERSONIDES OVER THE PSEUDOPHILOSOPHICAL RANTINGS OF BOETHIUS. I AM ENTIRELY NEGATIVE. THERE IS NOT A POSITIVE BONE IN MY BODY. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1746

January (1745, Old Style): James Burgh’s BRITAIN’S REMEMBRANCER: OR, THE DANGER NOT OVER, BEING SOME THOUGHTS ON THE PROPER IMPROVEMENTS OF THE PRESENT JUNCTURE, a warning occasioned by the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. England needed to purge itself of luxury and corruption, needed to get this accomplished like yesterday, in order to dilute the divine retribution of a wrathful God, a retribution that was inevitable! This would be rated as a spectacularly successful message since it would generate sales of in excess of 10,000 copies in England and its American colonies (Burgh would spend the remainder of his life attempting to reduplicate his publication triumph).

Ewald Jurgens von Kleist, Bishop of Pomerania had in the previous year devised a “Kleistian” apparatus by which he was able to “store” static electricity in significant quantities. He had coated a glass jar on the inside and outside with a layer of metal foil, cemented to the glass, and his jar had 2 electrodes at its top, one connected to the outside foil and the other to the inside foil. However, at Leyden University in Leiden, Germany, Professor of Mathematics, Philosophy, Medicine, and Astronomy Pieter van Musschenbroek had not yet been told of this Lutheran bishop’s discovery. Although the professor was able to generate static electrical energy by means of a friction machine, this phenomenon was transient and he needed a way to accumulate and store the energy. He, a student Andreas Cunaeus, and a collaborator Jean-Nicolas-Sébastien Allamand devised such a storage apparatus. It consisted simply of a glass jar of water in which there was a brass rod. The stored static electricity could be released by completing an external circuit between that rod and a hand placed in contact with the outside of the jar. During this month Professor Van Musschenbroek explained his storage apparatus to René Réaumurcome, and it would therefore become known as a Leyden jar, or Leiden jar.

IT IS A PROBLEM, FOR A “PHILOSOPHER OF HISTORY” SUCH AS MYSELF (AUSTIN MEREDITH), THAT PEOPLE WHO HAVE HEARD THAT THERE IS SUCH A THING AS “HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY” –PEOPLE WHO MAY EVEN HAVE GONE TO THE LENGTHS OF CONSULTING ONE OR ANOTHER “HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY” SUCH AS THAT CREATED BY UEBERWEG IN THE 19TH CENTURY– HAVE NEVER SO MUCH AS CONTEMPLATED THAT THERE MIGHT BE SUCH A THING AS ALTERNATIVE PHILOSOPHIES OF HISTORY BASED ON DIFFERENT UNDERSTANDINGS OF THE NATURE OF TIME. THE GIST OF MY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY, BASED ON MY OWN UNDERSTANDING OF THE NATURE OF TIME, IS AS FOLLOWS: OUR SO- CALLED HISTORIANS ARE DOING IT EXACTLY WRONG. IN THEIR FABRICATIONS ABOUT HISTORY, THEY ARE CHRONIC ANTICIPATORS. THEY PERPETUALLY OFFER TO THEIR UNSUSPECTING AUDIENCES THAT ACCOUNTS THEY HAVE PATCHED TOGETHER IN THE LIGHT OF SUBSEQUENT EVENTS ILLUMINATE OUR PRESENT CONDITION. THEIR HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY CONSTRUCTED PASTS BECOME OUR PREAMBLE FOR OUR PRESENT AGENDAS. THESE ACADEMIC PSEUDO-HISTORIANS WHO ENGAGE IN THIS ANTICIPATION AGENDA ARE WELL PAID BUT THEY OFFEND AGAINST REALITY. ANY HISTORY CONSTRUCTED IN THE LIGHT OF SUBSEQUENT EVENTS CAN AMOUNT TO NOTHING MORE THAN SPURIOUS MAKE-MAKE-BELIEVE, SPECIAL PLEADING. THE WARNING OF THE HIPPIE WAS “NEVER TRUST ANYONE OVER 30!” THE WARNING I PROFFER IS: “DON’T CREDIT ANY HISTORY THAT IS CREDIBLE. WHEN ANY OF THIS BEGINS TO MAKE ANY SENSE, DOUBLE-BEWARE!” TO BE SPECIFIC, THIS KOUROO DATABASE IS JUST CHOCK-FULL OF HISTORICAL CHRONOLOGIES. IF ANY OF THESE PROFFERED HISTORICAL CHRONOLOGIES ARE MORE THAN MERELY ACCURATE, IF ANY OF THEM OVER AND ABOVE THEIR ACCURACY BEGIN TO APPEAR TO YOU TO PROVIDE ANY PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATIONS OF OUR PRESENT CONDITION, THAT SHOULD BE ENOUGH TO MAKE YOUR SUSPICION- ANTENNAE BEGIN TO VIBRATE AND HUM. BIGTIME! I AM NOT CREATING THESE ACCURATE CHRONOLOGIES TO HELP YOU GROK YOUR PRESENT CONDITION. I AM CREATING THESE ACCURATE CHRONOLOGIES TO HELP YOU NON-GROK YOUR PRESENT CONDITION.

April: An experiment in electricity was conducted on the grounds of the Carthusian monastery in Paris. Each of about 200 monks took up his 25-foot length of iron wire, and they snaked themselves into a mile-long loop on the grounds. When each monk was clutching one end of one wire in one hand, and one end of another wire in his other hand, without warning their abbé, Jean-Antoine Nollet, connected the wire to battery of Leyden jars. Not only was it clear from the instant reaction of all the monks that electricity could travel over a great distance, but also, as far as the good abbé could discern on the basis of their exclamations and gestures, it transmitted itself virtually instantly. Instantly? Hey, if this electricity whatever-it-is is as fast as light itself, then let’s build a new kind of telegraph, electrical rather than optical! An electrical telegraph would be able to work in a fog, would be able to bend around corners, wouldn’t need towers and lines of sight, etc., etc.

THE FALLACY OF MOMENTISM: THIS STARRY UNIVERSE DOES NOT CONSIST OF A SEQUENCE OF MOMENTS. THAT IS A FIGMENT, ONE WE HAVE RECOURSE TO IN ORDER TO PRIVILEGE TIME OVER CHANGE, APRIVILEGING THAT MAKES CHANGE SEEM UNREAL, DERIVATIVE, A

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ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY MERE APPEARANCE. IN FACT IT IS CHANGE AND ONLY CHANGE WHICH WE EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, TIME BEING BY WAY OF RADICAL CONTRAST UNEXPERIENCED — A MERE INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCT. THERE EXISTS NO SUCH THING AS A MOMENT. NO “INSTANT” HAS EVER FOR AN INSTANT EXISTED.

electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1751

Reports of Benjamin Franklin’s experiments with electricity were printed in England. He suggested some ways by which lightning might be demonstrated to be an immense discharge of electricity, similar in type if not in scale to the sort of sparks which one can produce in a glass jar, and some experiments to confirm this were performed by gentlemen in France. In this year he also aided in founding a hospital in Philadelphia, which would become the 1st American general hospital.

BETWEEN ANY TWO MOMENTS ARE AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MOMENTS, AND BETWEEN THESE OTHER MOMENTS LIKEWISE AN INFINITE NUMBER, THERE BEING NO ATOMIC MOMENT JUST AS THERE IS NO ATOMIC POINT ALONG A LINE. MOMENTS ARE THEREFORE FIGMENTS. THE PRESENT MOMENT IS A MOMENT AND AS SUCH IS A FIGMENT, A FLIGHT OF THE IMAGINATION TO WHICH NOTHING REAL CORRESPONDS. SINCE PAST MOMENTS HAVE PASSED OUT OF EXISTENCE AND FUTURE MOMENTS HAVE YET TO ARRIVE, WE NOTE THAT THE PRESENT MOMENT IS ALL THAT EVER EXISTS — AND YET THE PRESENT MOMENT BEING A MOMENT IS A FIGMENT TO WHICH NOTHING IN REALITY CORRESPONDS.

electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1752

June 15, Thursday (New Style): The story is that, in a field near Philadelphia during a thunderstorm, Benjamin Franklin and his son experimented with a kite and confirmed that lightning was an immense discharge of electricity: We don’t know exactly which day it was, but we know it was June and we know it was 1852 when Ben Franklin and his son stood at the edge of a field on the outskirts of Philadelphia and flew a kite into the teeth of a thunderstorm. Franklin had been obsessed with lightning for years — so obsessed that four years earlier he had given up his lucrative printing business (which generated half his income) to pursue his research in relative peace. Peace yielded illumination. After pondering the workings of the Leyden jar (a glass bottle equipped with wife [sic] and cork that could be charged with electricity — the original capacitor) Franklin became convinced that lightning is electricity –a flash of genius that extinguished centuries of superstition– and by the late spring of 1852 he had hatched a way to test his daring hypothesis. And so, on that now legendary day in June, when the wind kicked up and the black clouds crowded out the hazy Philadelphia sun, Franklin and his son grabbed their kite, their twine, their Leyden jar, and their hats and hurried off to the out-of-the-way field which they had chosen as the site of their secret experiment.... The silken kite with a wire attached to one end, the twine with a key tied to it, the “Leyden jar”: the ingenious, childlike simplicity of Franklin’s apparatus makes the experiment all the more thrilling. Franklin described how it worked a few months later [October 1752] in a letter he wrote to a fellow enthusiast of electricity [Peter Collinson]: As soone as any of the Thunder Clouds come over the Kite, the pointed wire will draw the Electric Fire from them, & the Kite, with all the Twine, will be Electrified and the loose filaments of the Twine will stand out every way, and be attracted by an approaching finger. When the Rain has Wett the Kite & Twine, so that it can conduct the Electric Fire freely, you will find it stream out plentifully from the Key on the approach of your Knuckle. At this key the Phial may be Charged, and from Electric Fire thus obtained, Spirits may be kindled, and all the Other Electrical experiments be performed ... & thereby the Sameness of the Electrical Matter with that of Lightning compleatly demonstrated. Would you like to believe that this letter proves this story? I also would like to believe it, despite the fact that here Franklin is not alleging that he himself has conducted any actual such experiment, let alone in the company of his 21-year-old son William Franklin or in a field near Philadelphia in June 1752. Basically, the reason why a person such as Franklin, who can orate on ethics despite the fact that never in his life did he grasp that there was a difference between ethics and opportunistic prudence, has a good reputation is, we insist on awarding him a good reputation. This is an extension of our own resolve that, regardless of who we are and how we live our own lives, we are going to appreciate ourselves: Franklin is a designated founding father for us as Americans, we are going to appreciate ourselves, ergo we are going to forget anything negative about that man. The 1st time something about him is brought to our attention, we say “huh.” The 2d time, we say “huh.” The 3d and 17th, “huh.” We simply don’t retain. We have seen the same phenomenon in regard to the expert cue-card reader whom we retained a few years back as our President, who became known to media HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY persons as The Teflon President because nothing would stick to him. So, basically Franklin doesn’t have a problem, we have a problem.

In regard to Franklin allegedly here having brought lightning down from the clouds, by way of that kite of his, in an exceedingly dangerous and never-to-be-repeated experiment the result of which had he actually conducted it could well have been his electrocution, in order to demonstrate that lightning was electricity, how is it that we supose that we know of his actually having performed this experiment? Now, we do know of this experiment, and of when it was performed — but it is an experiment which had been earlier performed in France, by Frenchmen. Fifteen years after the fact an Englishman wrote, of this American of English origin, that Franklin, not some frog from across the Channel, had been the one who performed this vital dangerous experiment. This Englishman asserted that he had this story straight from Franklin! Franklin never commented upon that assertion by that proud English person but when one looks at Franklin’s correspondence and his journal for the period in question, one finds no references whatever to such an actual experiment as opposed to experiments by others and as opposed to mere thought experiments. There is a complete lack of any corroboration for this Englishman’s fifteen-years-later story.

Now, this sort of reticence is absolutely untypical of Franklin. The guy was nothing if he was not a tireless blower of his own horn. He was that century’s H. Ross Perot and Newt Gingrich all wrapped up in one big bundle. For this guy to have ever once done anything of significance, without having immediately bragged it up a dozen times in a dozen different places to a dozen different impressionable persons, would have been simply unthinkable. I cannot come up with any single other thing in his life, of any credit, for which he failed to be an immediate and effective publicist. This fifteen years of utter silence in regard to the experiment on lightning is something which, if true, stands alone in this man’s life history.

So, it is probable that this was something that a French-hating Englishman made up out of whole cloth, or was something that the blowhard Franklin created as what we might term bar-room conversation, which was picked up and believed by this gullible Englishman. Same sort of thing as when a cruiser goes to a pickup bar and tells the chick he is buying a drink for that he is a brain surgeon, moonlighting as an airlines pilot, and the chick maybe wants to believe him.

What would have been the basis for Franklin’s having made up a story about how he in the interest of science took a great and foolhardy risk and came close to electrocuting himself? Well, we do have some clues. We do know that Franklin once floated on his back and allowed a kite to tow him across a pond. We do know of something which actually did happen to Franklin, in his own home, involving electricity, shortly before the period in question. Franklin had invested in some electricity-demonstration apparatus, for instance he had bought some large insulated Leyden jars which could be used to accumulate a charge of electricity which would produce a nice electric arc when discharged, and he had these in his home. He invited some of his friends over for a fine dinner, with turkey, and when they arrived he exhibited to them the big bird they were

going to eat, in his living quarters, alive and unplucked. He then placed the turkey’s head between the electric contacts, and attempted to electrocute it for their amusement. When one of the wires came too close to his hand, he took the entire jolt of the Leyden jars through his own head and shoulders. The big bird was unfazed but our Ben was knocked flat on his ass. He was thrown in to convulsions. He couldn’t even remember what HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY hit him. His friends put him to bed and went and had their fine meal at a tavern. The next morning the circulation was back in Franklin’s hands but the back of his neck was still numb.3

I would suggest that if this corroborated foolish and vicious and unsavory incident of attempting to electrocute one’s supper for the amazement and amusement of one’s drinking cronies is not the real-world origin of that honorific story that arrived on the scene fifteen years too late and with utterly no corroboration, then we simply don’t know how to read our own history.But this is how the story would be being depicted as of 1877, after the WEATHER

passage of almost five generations of human life, in THE THUNDER-STORM by Charles Thomlinson, F.R.S.:

You note immediately that these folks have forgotten some of the details even of the made-up story, in that William is clearly not being portrayed as 21 years of age.

FIGURING OUT WHAT AMOUNTS TO A “HISTORICAL CONTEXT” IS WHAT 3.Noting the minor retrograde amnesia which had been produced by this shock, Benjamin Franklin contemplated “trying this practice on mad people.” Franklin is thus the originator of the idea of electroshock therapy. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY THE CRAFT OF HISTORICIZING AMOUNTS TO, AND THIS NECESSITATES DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN THE SET OF EVENTS THAT MUST HAVE TAKEN PLACE BEFORE EVENT E COULD BECOME POSSIBLE, AND MOST CAREFULLY DISTINGUISHING THEM FROM ANOTHER SET OF EVENTS THAT COULD NOT POSSIBLY OCCUR UNTIL SUBSEQUENT TO EVENT E.

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1753

Benjamin Franklin was awarded the Copley Medal for his discovery that lightning was an immense discharge of electricity, and elected a member of the Royal Society. He received the degree of M.A. from Yale and Harvard.

HISTORY’S NOT MADE OF WOULD. WHEN SOMEONE REVEALS, FOR INSTANCE, THAT A PARTICULAR INFANT WOULD INVENT THE SEWING MACHINE, S/HE DISCLOSES THAT WHAT IS BEING CRAFTED IS NOT REALITY BUT PREDESTINARIANISM. THE HISTORIAN IS SETTING CHRONOLOGY TO “SHUFFLE,” WHICH IS NOT A PERMISSIBLE OPTION BECAUSE IN THE REAL WORLD SUCH SHUFFLE IS IMPOSSIBLE. THE RULE OF REALITY IS THAT THE FUTURE HASN’T EVER HAPPENED, YET. THERE IS NO SUCH “BIRD’S EYE VIEW” AS THIS IN THE REAL WORLD, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD NO REAL BIRD HAS EVER GLIMPSED AN ACTUAL HISTORICAL SEQUENCE.

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ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY February 1, Thursday: A letter was posted to Scots Magazine from Renfrew, Scotland by a “C.M.” who suggested that information might be conveyed over long distances by sending electricity through wires, accomplishing the transmission of information over a distance without any need for a direct line of sight from a landscape peak or tower to another landscape peak or tower. The one person of whom we are aware who might have authored such a letter was Charles Morrison, a surgeon of Greenock who would subsequently engage in the Glasgow tobacco trade and then emigrate to Virginia. It seems that before or after this letter the author did conduct some experiments to validate his idea, using Leyden jars as the source for his electricity, and did communicate the results of such experiments to Sir Hans Sloane. From this point until 1837 some 60 different apparatuses would be constructed for one or another variety of telegraph device that would in one manner or another substitute electricity for light.

A pamphlet appeared in London, to be sold by J. Newbery in St. Paul’s Church-Yard and M. Cooper in Pater- Noſter-Row, entitled THE HILLIAD: AN EPIC POEM BY C. SMART, A.M. FELLOW OF PEMBROKE-HALL, IN THE UNIVERſITY OF CAMBRIDGE. This pamphlet mocked John Hill, a botanist who had been struggling unsuccessfully to be accepted by the Fellows of the Royal Society merely on the basis of his recognized standing as a botanist despite his pathetic lack of any proper position in British society (the title is a reference to Alexander Pope’s THE DUNCIAD the title of which had been in reference to Homer’s THE ILIAD, but substituting the name of this unfortunate lower-class botanist; this poem invokes a “Hillario” who, seduced by a Sibyl, gives up his career as an apothecary, only to make of himself as a writer an “arch-dunce”). THE PAPER WAR BOTANIZING

YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT EITHER THE REALITY OF TIME OVER THAT OF CHANGE, OR CHANGE OVER TIME — IT’S PARMENIDES, OR HERACLITUS. I HAVE GONE WITH HERACLITUS.

February 17, Saturday: A letter published in Scots Magazine suggested that information might be conveyed over long distances, by sending electricity through wires.

The letter in question had been dated “Renfrew, Feb. 1. 1753” and signed with the initials “C.M.” The one person of whom we are aware who might have authored this letter, was a surgeon of Greenock, Charles Morrison, who would subsequently engage in the Glasgow tobacco trade and then emigrate to Virginia. It seems he did conduct some experiments to validate his idea, using Leyden jars, and communicated the results of these experiments to Sir Hans Sloane. From this point until 1837 some 60 different electrical apparatuses would be constructed for one or another variety of telegraph device, that would rely upon electricity rather than light for the instantaneous transmission of information over a distance.

In Sweden this day was a Wednesday and would be followed by March 1st, a Thursday, as that nation accomplished its transit from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. Finland was included in this calendar change but at this point was merely a district in Sweden (until in 1809 it would be seized from Sweden by Russia).

ONE COULD BE ELSEWHERE, AS ELSEWHERE DOES EXIST. electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY ONE CANNOT BE ELSEWHEN SINCE ELSEWHEN DOES NOT. (TO THE WILLING MANY THINGS CAN BE EXPLAINED, THAT FOR THE UNWILLING WILL REMAIN FOREVER MYSTERIOUS.)

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1754

G.W. Richman, a Russian, was attempting to measure the energy of a lightning strike, when there was an explosion and he was killed. After his assistant had come back to consciousness, he reported that something blue and the size of a fist had come out of the electrodes of the equipment toward Richman’s face, and had there exploded. Wow, atomic power was something not just to be messed with! ELECTRICITY

IT IS NO COINCIDENCE THAT IT IS MORTALS WHO CONSUME OUR HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS, FOR WHAT WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO DO IS EVADE THE RESTRICTIONS OF THE HUMAN LIFESPAN. (IMMORTALS, WITH NOTHING TO LIVE FOR, TAKE NO HEED OF OUR STORIES.)

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1783

A Swiss chemist, Genevois Aimé Argand, presented George III with a lamp. (Shouldn’t he have offered the man something he needed — like a last name?) The king introduced him to somebody who introduced him to somebody who introduced him to Matthew Boulton, who happened to be the partner of James Watt, and the lamp was patented and a factory was set up. The key improvement in this lamp design, the Argand lamp, was an even and adequate supply of air to the flame — but sometimes it’s little things like that which make all the difference. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

Although the Reverend Pierre Étienne Louis Dumont’s name was not on the list of those proscribed by Geneva’s aristocratic party, he chose to follow the example of his townsman Pierre Lefort, the first tutor, minister, and general of the tsar. He departed from Geneva, joining his mother and sisters at St Petersburg, Russia, where his father had formerly been court jeweler. There he would become, for a period of 18 months, the pastor of the French Reformed church.

CONTINGENCY ALTHOUGH VERY MANY OUTCOMES ARE OVERDETERMINED, WE TRUST THAT SOMETIMES WE ACTUALLY MAKE REAL CHOICES. “THIS IS THE ONLY WAY, WE SAY, BUT THERE ARE AS MANY WAYS AS THERE CAN BE DRAWN RADII FROM ONE CENTRE.”

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ELECTRIC 1790 WALDEN News items relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: • The cylinder press • Telegraphy

It was during this year that Claude Chappe was devising the semaphore system of telegraphy, optical rather than electric. Such a system would work only during the day during conditions of good visibility, and its requirements in manpower and, above all, in discipline, were awesome. The semaphore stations could not be more than, at best, about ten miles apart, and everyone had to be alert during all the time that a signal could possibly be seen at the horizon. But the key element of such a system of communication turned out to be not that it was available for those who were powerful and connected, but that it was utterly unavailable to those who were not. Think of a telephone system, for instance, or a fax system, by which only members of the government would be allowed to communicate! The first E-mail, actually, depending on how you define it, would have been a message sent when electronic signaling systems were being introduced, or would have been a message sent over the telegraph in Morse code as of 1837.4

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” — Carl Sagan

THE AGE OF REASON WAS A PIPE DREAM, OR AT BEST A PROJECT. ACTUALLY, HUMANS HAVE ALMOST NO CLUE WHAT THEY ARE DOING, WHILE CREDITING THEIR OWN LIES ABOUT WHY THEY ARE DOING IT.

electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

4. Clearly “What hath God wrought” was not the first message sent by telegraph; Morse had built an experimental 10-mile telegraph line 5 years earlier and presumably sent messages over it that were probably no more consequential than the first E-mail messages. “What hath God wrought,” which was the inaugural message on the Baltimore/Washington line in 1843, was the first public demonstration of the system. Usages that we would now consider “E-mail” may have evolved imperceptibly from file sharing or other practices. The closest analogy we might find for E-mail to the “What hath God wrought” type of thingie would be the ARPANET demonstration in 1972, which clearly postdates the introduction of E-mail) or would have been a message received by the first ticker-tape machine as of 1870. Here is an early E-mail message (note the date) from “The Journal,” a feature of Douglas Engelbart’s ARC NLS system. the message is quoted from the archive of that project, which is now held by the Green Library at Stanford University: RWW 1-JUL-71 14:58 7364 NIC Open for On-line Business (We Hope) This message is to demonstrate we are up on the network open for NIC business. We connected to BBN and are using their telnet to connect back to ourselves. A historic moment. ELECTRONIFICATION HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1791

March 2, Wednesday: John Wesley died.

A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: Père Claude Chappe had devised the optical semaphore system of telegraphy. ELECTRIC At 11AM the brothers Chappe transmitted a message between a castle in Brûlon, near Le Mans, and a private WALDEN residence approximately 16 kilometers away, in Parcé, by means of an optical telegraph apparatus. It took four minutes to transmit the following message: SI VOUS RÉUSSISSEZ, VOUS SEREZ BIENTÔT COUVERT DE GLOIRE Transmission of such a message having required approximately 4 minutes, we can calculate that telegraph transmission began at the rate of merely 14 characters per minute, or approximately 2 baud (the electric single- needle telegraph device introduced by Cooke and Wheatstone in 1837 would double this, achieving a throughput of 4 baud, whereas your basic voice-line modem of today achieves perhaps 56K baud). Such a system would work only during the day during conditions of good visibility, and its requirements in manpower and, above all, in discipline, were just awesome. The semaphore stations could not be more than, at best, about ten miles apart, and everyone had to be alert during all the time that a signal could possibly be seen at the horizon. But the key element of such a system of communication turned out to be not that it was available for those who were powerful and connected, but that it was utterly unavailable to those who were not. Think of a telephone system, for instance, or a fax system, by which only members of the government would be allowed to communicate! Chappe had been attempting, but not succeeding, in figuring out a way in which such messaging could be effected electrically. Such technology was so new and novel that it had yet to be awarded any special standardized name at all. ELECTRONIFICATION

TRALFAMADORIANS EXPERIENCE REALITY IN 4 DIMENSIONS RATHER THAN 3 AND HAVE SIMULTANEOUS ACCESS TO PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. THEY ARE ABLE TO SEE ALONG THE TIMELINE OF THE UNIVERSE TO THE EXACT TIME AND PLACE AT WHICH AS THE RESULT OF A TRALFAMADORIAN EXPERIMENT, THE UNIVERSE IS ANNIHILATED. BILLY PILGRIM, WHILE CAGED IN A TRALFAMADORIAN ZOO, ACQUIRES THEIR ATTITUDE TOWARD TIME, AND SO WHEN HE RETURNS TO EARTH, HE BECOMES A HISTORIAN VERY LIKE ALL OUR OTHER HISTORIANS: ALTHOUGH HE CANNOT HIMSELF SEE INTO THE FUTURE THE WAY THE TRALFAMADORIANS DO, LIKE ALL OUR OTHER HUMAN HISTORIANS DO HE PRETENDS TO BE ABLE TO SEE ALL PERIODS OF OUR PAST TRAJECTORY NOT WITH THE EYES OF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE LIVING DURING THOSE PERIODS, BUT WITH THE OVERARCHING EYE OF GOD. THIS ENABLES HIM TO PRETEND TO BE VERY VERY WISE AND TO SOUND HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY VERY VERY IMPRESSIVE!

electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1792

July 29, Sunday: William Murdock remembered from his childhood how housewives in Ayrshire used to burn a special coal that gave a bright light, which boosted the meager light provided by oil lamps and candles. He had set up an iron retort in the backyard garden of his cottage at Cross Street in Redruth from which a 70-foot metal tube ran into the living room. On this day he achieved a coal gas flame inside the room, as an illuminant. Others had also experimented with lighting coal gas produced by heating coal, but had not been successful. A Frenchman Le Bon had created a light from a gas produced from burning wood, but this had not caught on. Tradition has it that Murdock had first experimented with burning coal in his Mother’s old kettle and lighting the gas that came out of the spout. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE HISTORIAN TYPICALLY SUPPOSES NOW TO BE THE WHY OF THEN. THE REALITY IS VERY MUCH TO THE CONTRARY, FOR NOW IS NOT THE WHY OF THEN: INSTEAD, THEN WAS THE HOW OF NOW. ANOTHER WAY TO SAY THIS IS THAT HISTORIANS WHO ANTICIPATE OFFEND AGAINST REALITY. A HISTORY WRITTEN IN THE LIGHT OF SUBSEQUENT EVENTS AMOUNTS TO SPURIOUS MAKE- BELIEVE. TO DO A GOOD JOB OF RECORDING HISTORY, ONE MUST BECOME IGNORANT (OR FEIGN IGNORANCE) OF EVERYTHING THAT WE NOW KNOW TO HAVE FOLLOWED.

electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1796

In the Soho district, William Murdoch set up a small experimental plant for the production of coal gas for lighting. (By the 1830s more than half of London would be illuminated by this new fuel.)

LIGHTING THE NIGHT

IS HISTORY A SCIENCE? ASTRONOMY IS A SCIENCE, FOR IT IS A STUDY OF REAL OBJECTS CALLED “STARS” (AND SUCHLIKE) SITUATED AT VARIOUS REAL LOCATIONS IN THE DIMENSIONS OF SPACE. WERE HISTORY A SCIENCE LIKE ASTRONOMY, IT WOULD NEED TO BE A SCIENCE OF EVENTS (AND SUCHLIKE) AT VARIOUS REAL SITUATIONS IN THE DIMENSION OF TIME. HOWEVER, IT WOULD NEED TO PROVIDE AN OVERVIEW OF ALL SUCH EVENTS, NOT ONLY THOSE AT VARIOUS REAL SITUATIONS IN THE PAST PORTION OF TIME, BUT ALSO THOSE AT VARIOUS REAL SITUATIONS IN THE FUTURE PORTION OF TIME. AND NOTHING IN THE FUTURE NOW EXISTS, WHICH IS WHY WE REFER TO IT AS “FUTURE.” IT IS FUTURE NOT MERELY BECAUSE WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT IT YET, BUT BECAUSE IT IS INDEFINITE AND UNDEFINED. GOD HAS NOT YET CREATED IT, PROVIDING IT WITH ITS “DEFINITUDE.” THEREFORE THIS WOULD BE A SPURIOUS METAPHOR: IN THE SENSE IN WHICH ASTRONOMY IS SCIENCE, HISTORY IS NOT. WHEN HISTORIANS PRETEND TO BE DOING SCIENCE, THEY ARE ATTEMPTING TO REMOVE REALITY FROM THE LAP OF GOD. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1799

William Murdock moved back to Birmingham where he continued to experiment with gas lighting and with practical methods for making, storing, and purifying gas. The main problem faced by Murdock was to find a safe way of providing effective light. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

Murdock patented a “D” slide valve that greatly simplified the mechanism of the steam engine.

ESSENCE IS BLUR. SPECIFICITY, THE OPPOSITE OF ESSENCE, IS OF THE NATURE OF TRUTH.

electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1800

The Lyceum in London, and other theatres, seem to have been lit by gas, being generated on-site from oil. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

By this point the Swiss chemist Ami Argand had developed the sort of glass lamp chimney with which we are familiar, which protects the flame from gusts of air without interfering with the draft of the lamp.

ESSENCES ARE FUZZY, GENERIC, CONCEPTUAL; ARISTOTLE WAS RIGHT WHEN HE INSISTED THAT ALL TRUTH IS SPECIFIC AND PARTICULAR (AND WRONG WHEN HE CHARACTERIZED TRUTH AS A GENERALIZATION).

electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1802

James Watt powered his steam engine with the vapors released by heated coal in an enclosed space.5

It was at about at this point, too, at which Watt, working in his old age in the garret of his home at Doldowlod, Radnorshire, invented his sculpturing machine for the reproduction of original busts and figures.

To celebrate the Peace of Amiens, Matthew Boulton installed two gas lamps outside his Soho factory, which illuminated part of the factory’s exterior.Sir Humphrey Davy created an electric arc lamp (it was crude but it WILLIAM MURDOCK

was an electric light). ELECTRONIFICATION

“HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE.

5.Within the next decade, the business of producing these coal vapors for “gaslight” would thrive. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1803

An experiment in magnetism and electricity was performed upon the corpse of George Foster, who had murdered his wife and child by drowning them in the Paddington Canal. This experiment was performed by Professor Giovanni Aldini. The purpose of Professor Aldini’s experiment was to determine whether by galvanic stimulation the “vital powers” of a person recently deceased might be restored. When conductors were applied to the fresh corpse’s ear and rectum, muscular contractions were to be noted, movements giving “almost an appearance of reanimation.” These galvanic experiments continued for seven hours. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT ELECTRONIFICATION THE MARKET FOR HUMAN BODY PARTS WOMEN HANGED IN ENGLAND DURING 1803

Date Name Age Place of execution Crime

15/04 Mary Lappidge Warwick Uttering forgery

01/08 Martha Chapple York Castle Murder

11/08 Sarah Jones 27 Shrewsbury Murder

YOUR GARDEN-VARIETY ACADEMIC HISTORIAN INVITES YOU TO CLIMB ABOARD A HOVERING TIME MACHINE TO SKIM IN METATIME BACK ACROSS THE GEOLOGY OF OUR PAST TIMESLICES, WHILE OFFERING UP A GARDEN VARIETY OF COGENT ASSESSMENTS OF OUR PROGRESSION. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP! YOU SHOULD REFUSE THIS HELICOPTERISH OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORICAL PAST, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD THINGS HAPPEN ONLY AS THEY HAPPEN. WHAT THIS SORT WRITES AMOUNTS, LIKE MERE “SCIENCE FICTION,” MERELY TO “HISTORY FICTION”: IT’SNOT WORTH YOUR ATTENTION.

electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY At the plant in Soho, Birmingham, England the foundry interior was entirely illuminated by gas. Other places nearby, such as the Phillips and Lee cotton mill, began to use gas lighting. Soon afterwards Boulton & Watt began to sell lighting and heating equipment and William Murdock became a partner in the business. It would not be long before all large factories used such gas lighting. JAMES WATT MATTHEW BOULTON LIGHTING THE NIGHT

THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD. THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO’S CENTER OF THE AMERICAN WEST HAS AS ITS OFFICIAL MOTTO “TURNING HINDSIGHT INTO FORESIGHT” — WHICH INDICATES THAT ONLY PANDERERS ARE WELCOME THERE. IN A BOOK THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT HISTORY, ISSUED BY RANDOM HOUSE IN 2016, I FIND THE PHRASE “LOOKED UPON FROM THE BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF HISTORY, ....” ONLY A MERE STORYTELLER, NEVER A HISTORIAN, COULD HAVE PENNED SUCH A PHRASE — BECAUSE NO BIRD HAS EVER FLOWN OVER HISTORY.

electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1805

A Manchester Mill Owner, Mr. George Lee of Phillips & Lee, ordered William Murdock’s coal-gas lights. Although he would not be encouraged to patent the invention, he would be awarded the Gold Medal by the Royal Society in recognition of his achievements. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1807

January 28, Wednesday: Publication of the Piano Sonata op.20, the Piano Trio op.22, Twelve Dances for piano op.24 and the Twelve Dances for piano op.25 by Johann Nepomuk Hummel was announced in the Wiener Zeitung.

An experimental installation of some gas street lighting, on Pall Mall in London. The usefulness of carbureted hydrogen gas as a fuel for street lighting would be amply demonstrated.

FIRE

(The resultant of this 1807 improvement, after almost a couple or centuries, can be viewed below.)

LIGHTING THE NIGHT

NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE THE 28TH OF JANUARY, 1807 AT ALL ONE MUST APPRECIATE IT AS A TODAY (THE FOLLOWING DAY, TOMORROW, IS BUT A PORTION OF THE UNREALIZED FUTURE AND IFFY AT BEST).

electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1808

William Murdock read a paper before the Royal Society detailing his discovery of a coal-gas system of lighting. Frederick Winsor came from Germany to London at this time claiming to have a gas system of lighting, but his ideas were believed to have been obtained whilst working for Le Bon. He was trying to float a company called the Great National Light and Heat Company and would seek a Parliamentary Bill in 1809. His solicitor wrote to Mr. George Lee of Phillips & Lee in Manchester, since his Mill was one of the largest in the country, at the time, asking for his views on his gas lighting system. Mr. Lee being very supportive of Murdock extolled his gas lighting system stating that he had been the first in the field. Lee’s views were made public with the effect that Winsor began to be stonewalled by the British, and eventually his Parliamentary Bill would be thrown out. However Winsor would form another company later, The Gas Light & Coke Company, and it would light some streets of London in 1813. Within 10 years most of the major cities in the United Kingdom would be using gas illumination. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1809

During this year the British would be experimenting with the gas lighting of Pall Mall, plus a few homes of the well-to-do would acquire gas connections. In this year, also, the “Argand” lamp (in which the oil was fed to the wick by gravity, the reservoir being higher than the burner, with the rate of feed being adjusted by a valve) was prepared by Clegg. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

January 9, Monday: The electric telegraph was invented by Sömmering in München.

Considering the evaluation delivered in the report delivered November 22d, the US government resolved to more vigorously enforce its Embargo of 1807. The result of course would be further economic damage.

According to BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS (Groton, 1894), Jacob Hosmer of Groton and Catharine Wellington of Concord were married by the Reverend Ezra Ripley. CONCORD TOWN RECORDS

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 9th of 1 M / Sister Elizabeth spent the day with us whose company was very acceptable, on her acct I set the eveng at home writing - RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE

electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1812

John Lauris Blake received an AB degree at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Henry Cogswell Knight, graduating from Brown University, described Rhode Island. HENRY COGSWELL KNIGHT

The National Light and Heat Company was founded. The first coal-gas street lighting would begin two years later. WILLIAM MURDOCK

David Melville was in this year lighting his home in Newport, and the street itself, and his factory in Pawtucket, by means of coal gas. This was attracting considerable attention.

FIRE

LIGHTING THE NIGHT

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1813

In London’s Haymarket Theatre, and on Westminster Bridge, gas lights were introduced. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

The various experiments in electrical telegraphy had been to this point so disappointing, that a satirical poem was created: Electrical telegraphs all must deplore, Their service would merely be mocking; Unfit to afford us intelligence more Than such as would really be shocking.

electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1814

The streets of the district of St. Margaret’s Westminster, London were the 1st to be illuminated by gas. LIGHTING THE NIGHT WILLIAM MURDOCK HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1815

A miner’s safety lamp was invented by Humphrey Davy. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

The cast-iron cookstove would, by the turn of our century, be being referred to as “the black beast of her despair” — but in this year this monstrous apparatus was making it for the 1st time unnecessary for a servant or housewife to cook while standing within an enormous fireplace amidst several different cooking fires!

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1816

Sir Francis Ronalds devised an electric telegraph — the British Admiralty refused to look at his device, commenting that “telegraphs are now totally unnecessary, and no other than the one in use [semaphore] will be adopted.”

Baltimore became the 1st US city lit by gas.6 LIGHTING THE NIGHT

April: After the fall of Napoléon the family of origin of Nicholas Marcellus Hentz had been proscribed, and therefore they had emigrated from France to the port of New-York in the New World. During this month they settled in Wilkesburg, Pennsylvania.

After years of struggle, Rubens Peale opened his Philadelphia exhibition hall and demonstrated its innovative new lighting scheme. The gaslight shone forth from five huge burners, and was augmented and prettified of course by the usual array of glittering cut glass crystals.

6. Bear in mind: this is indoor illumination, not outdoor. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY June 22, Saturday: Britain ended its 13-year occupation of St. Pierre and Miquelon as these islands reverted to being a colony of France.

That night, George Gordon, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley having plans for a boat trip around Lake Geneva on the next day, they abandoned their efforts to compete in the story contest, but Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft, after her late start, was persisting. The friends discussed a subject from Madame de Staël’s DEL’ALLEMAGNE: “whether the principle of life could be discovered and whether scientists could galvanize a corpse of manufactured humanoid.”7 ELECTRONIFICATION

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day Early this morning Several friends went to fort Walcot & procured liberty to meet with the Soldiers at 11 OClock, they went in the Custom House boat kindly accomodated by John Stevens. The company from abroad were James Halleck, John Hull - - - -Robert Parry, Sally Parry, Dorothy Holding, Alice Abbot of our own towns folks was father Rodman, Jonathon Dennis, John Slocum, Benja Hadwen Hannah Dennis, Ruth & Eliza Rodman. They HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY first went to Fort Walcot where they had good service & truth was maintained, then to fort Adams where Truth also bore the Palm, & the good cause preserved -This meeting was of great weight on my Spirits & since I find it succeeded well, I feel rejoiced with those who went having travailed with them as deeply as my capasity would admit. - I was fully persuaded it was best for me not to go, but to stay & promote the meeting appointed for people of colour at 5 OC this afternoon -While our aforementioned friends were on the fort Hugh Judge, Gerrard T Hopkins & company were called to go on Board the Packet for NYork 0- which rendered my presence necessary to pay their passages as one of the committee for that purpose Robert & Sally Parry & Sister Ruth dined with us. — The black meeting this Afternoon was not largely attended, but succeeded pretty well John Hallock, Dorothy Golding twice, James Halleck twice were concerned in testimony — Robert & Sally lodged at Jonathon Dennis’s to night & expect to be at Portsmouth tomorrow from thence to Providence homeward bound. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

7. The term “scientist” in this translation is of course an anachronism, as this term would not begin to be used until 1830. In regard to the scientific currency of Mary Shelley’s galvanic mechanism for bringing life to Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s monster: In 1809 in ELEMENTS OF PHYSIOPHILOSOPHY, no less a credited figure than Lorenz Oken had declared that “Galvanism is the principle of life. There is no other vital force than the galvanic polarity.”

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ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY June 23, Sunday morning: Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft had had a “waking” nightmare: I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life ... His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away ... hope that ... this thing ... would subside into dead matter ... he opens his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains ...

She scribbled a promising 1st draft of some lines: It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half- extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips. The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room.... HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY She would originate a story about a monster created out of dead bodies and Dr. Erasmus Darwin’s life fluid of electricity, by a fictitious Dr. Victor Frankenstein. The lines scribbled this morning would become what now 8 opens Chapter IV of FRANKENSTEIN; OR, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS.

George Gordon, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley began a boat tour of the lake.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal 1st day 23rd of 6th M 1816 / In our forenoon meeting James Halleck was largely & pertinently concerned in testimony - Dorothy Golding was short & pretty clever. - In the Afternoon John Halleck was long & I thought his testimony was pretty sound & attended with a degree of life — I believe him to be an honest

8. Laura Dassow Walls has inquired rhetorically, “Is it necessary to remark that Mary Shelly’s FRANKENSTEIN is still the paradigmatic myth of romantic science, right down to ‘Dr. Strangelove,’ Michael Crichton’s JURASSIC PARK, and the dystopias of cyberpunk?” — but as we shall see, this misappreciates our 20th-Century horror movies to have been accurate renditions of the Shelley romance, something which they simply are not. Shelley’s tale was not at all similar to the popular “Jurassic Park” with its focus upon hubristic science and the wrongfulness of others, but to the contrary was very similar to the unpopular “Elephant Man” with its focus upon our personal, instinctual, and very very wrong revulsion at the sight of human deformity. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY friend. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

(In this year Erasmus Darwin’s grandson Charles Robert Darwin had reached at the age of 7 years — and his portrait was painted.)

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

electricity “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1817

Rembrandt Peale opened his Baltimore, Maryland museum, illuminated by a “magic ring” of 100 individual flames which could all be expanded or contracted by the manipulation of one valve. Some people came to see the exhibits, and some came just to see this brave new lighting scheme, which was being heavily advertised.

FIRE

The City of London Gas-Light and Coke Company. London’s Drury Lane and Covent Garden theaters began to be lit by coal-gas, with the jets bare. To give an idea of the size of some theater gas installations: the very large Paris Opera House would contain some 28 miles of gas pipe and have 960 burners, while the Royal Theatre in Stockholm would light its stage with 66 footlights and 72 wing lights and would have between its scenic borders 8 clusters containing 44 burners each. There was of course an ever-present fire hazard — several ballerinas would catch their tutus on fire and die of burns, and theatre fires sometimes had tragic results for audiences. LIGHTING THE NIGHT HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1818

Gas lighting, although hot and smelly and not all that bright, was becoming popular in England, where the Regent was having a system of gas lights installed in his pavilion in Brighton. Gas lighting was beginning to be used for certain principal streets of the city of Dublin. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: The brothers Harrison Gray Dyar and Joseph Dyar became apprentices in the Concord clockmaking shop of Lemuel Curtis on the “Milldam”. According to Alfred Munroe’s CONCORD AND THE TELEGRAPH (published by the Concord Antiquarian Society), it would be Harrison Gray Dyar, not any Johnny-come-lately like the American portrait painter Samuel F.B. Morse, who in 1826 “erected the first real line and despatched the first message over it by ELECTRIC electricity ever sent by such means in America,” over half a mile of wire alongside the “Causeway” or Lowell WALDEN Road. This was even years prior to the 1837 joint English patent on electric telegraphy taken out by Sir William Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone (Munroe acknowledges that “This may seem strange to most of our readers, as the credit of this great discovery has been generally conceded to Prof. Morse”). According to Colonel William Whiting of Concord, this line had been hung from the trees along the “Causeway” or Lowell Road or Red Bridge or Hunt’s Bridge (over the Concord River at Gleason E6) road, using for insulators the glass phials of an apothecary, “all the way to Curtis’s.”9

The Dyar brothers would record the sparks on a ribbon of moistened litmus paper on a spool that revolved by clockwork. The nitric acid that was formed on the litmus paper by the action of the electricity left clearly legible little red marks on the blue litmus paper. His experiment would work well enough that he would be able to get some cash backing in New-York and run a line at the Long Island racetrack, and then propose to string

9. And ain’t that just great, the home of the brothers George William Curtis and James Burrill Curtis who helped Henry Thoreau raise the frame of his shanty on Walden Pond is not included on the Concord map. Did they reside, then, in some adjoining town? HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY a wire across New Jersey between New-York and Philadelphia. However, the New Jersey legislature would condemn him as “dangerous” and a “wizard,” and refuse permission for this larger experiment, and then one of his backers would threaten to take him to court to get his money back, and pretty soon it would be all over but the shouting. There is an argument that this portrait painter Morse got a lot of his plans for the electric telegraph in America from this Concord experimenter. For instance, Dyar used batteries, and had the idea of sending electric impulses along a wire, and had the idea of spacing the sparks in such a way as to form an alphabetic code, and developed such a code. We know also that the famous Morse would marry a sister of Charles Walker, and that Walker had worked with Dyar on this scheme and had retained many of Dyar’s sketches — so we may presume that either Walker or his sister might well have showed those sketches to Morse.10

“HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE.

March 11, Wednesday: Henry Jacob Bigelow was born, a son of Dr. Jacob Bigelow and Mary Scollay Bigelow.

Sarah Elizabeth Shattuck was born in Concord, 2d child of Daniel Shattuck and Betsey Miles Shattuck.

Official date of publication11 of the story by Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft Shelley about the birth of a monster out of dead bodies with the help of Dr. Erasmus Darwin’s electricity, FRANKENSTEIN; OR, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS, with a preface ostensibly authored by the author but, for some reason, actually written for her by her spouse Percy Bysshe Shelley: “The event on which the interest of the story depends is exempt from the disadvantages of a mere tale of spectres or enchantment.”

This husbandly evaluation was accurate. You should notice that there is simply no “antiscientism” to be found

10. It has also been established that Morse knew others besides Walker who had worked with Dyer. Is this not much too much of a coincidence? In the case of the electric telegraph, it is now clear that funding and organization and social anthropology were more important ingredients of such a success than any of the credited technological tinkering — for a whole lot of people had been developing these technological capabilities without possessing Morse’s political and social connections and without attaining the public and private funding and societal legitimation that would get them anywhere. 11. Actually, copies of her anonymous book had begun to be offered by the small London publishing house of Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mayor, and Jones during December of the previous year. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY in this romance which might have given a 19th-Century person such as Henry Thoreau pause.

The antiscientism with which we are so familiar actually is all stuff which Hollywood has imported into the tale during the 20th Century! The 1931 originary movie would begin with an anonymous authoritative lecturer setting the scene by informing us that we are to learn of “a man of science who sought to create a man after his own image without reckoning upon God.” This movie’s 1935 sequel “Bride of Frankenstein” would be even more explicit, in presenting an actress portraying the author engaged in conversation with Mr. Shelley and George Gordon, Lord Byron, going: “My purpose was to write a moral lesson of the punishment that befell a mortal man who dared to emulate God.”

But where had the real Mary Shelley ever expressed such an attitude? In fact she had placed in Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s mouth, as his dying words, the hope that although he had failed in his scientific objective to “renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption,” there was still room for hope as “another may succeed.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY September 18, Friday: The Austrian Landrechte refused Johanna van Beethoven’s request to remove her son Karl from the guardianship of her brother-in-law Ludwig van Beethoven.

The Theatre Royal in Edinburgh made itself the initial theater in Great Britain to be lit by gas. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 18 of 9 M / Last evening about 1 / 2 past nine OClock cousin Elizabeth Anthony died at the House of cousin Mary Gould in Middletown aged 91 Years & about 5 months. her Mother was sister to my Grandfather Gould, & she was much noticed by my father as a relation & always visited in the family from my earliest recollection.- RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1819

David Brewster FRS and Robert Jameson (1774-1854) began the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, which would replace the Edinburgh Magazine. Ten volumes (1819-1824) were published under the joint editorship of Brewster and Jameson and four (1825-1826) would be edited by Jameson alone.

Augustin-Jean Fresnel devised a lens and burner for the lighthouses of the French Ministry of Marine which would vastly increase their effective candlepower beyond the 24-candle display of such major older lights as the Eddystone Lighthouse in the English Channel (he had adopted the dioptric apparatus that had been being recommended by David Brewster FRS). LIGHTING THE NIGHT

The 2d volume of Friend Luke Howard’s THE CLIMATE OF LONDON, DEDUCED FROM METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS, MADE AT DIFFERENT PLACES IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE METROPOLIS (London, W. Phillips, sold also by J. and A. Arch, two volumes, 1818-1820): The names ... were intended as arbitrary terms for the structure of clouds, and the meaning of each was carefully fixed by a definition ... (Local terms) take away from the nomenclature its present advantage of constituting ... an universal language, by means of which the intelligent of every country may convey to each other their ideas without the necessity of translation. And the more this facility of communication can be increased, by our adopting by consent uniform modes, terms, and measures for our observations, the sooner we shall arrive at a knowledge of the phenomena of the atmosphere in all parts of the globe, and carry the science to some degree of perfection. HOWARD PUBLICATIONS HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY Friend Luke had discovered the phenomenon we now understand as the urban heat island, by noticing that an urban center like London was warmer at night than the surrounding countryside. After making a 9-year comparison between temperature readings in London and its environs showing that on average “Night is 3.70° warmer and day 0.34° cooler in the city than in the country,” he inferred that the extensive consumption of heating fuel and the resultant production of chimney smoke in the city was enough to alter the local climate.

It is of course no wonder that London was modifying the local climate! By this point, 288 miles of gas pipes had been laid under its pavements to supply 51,000 burners. WILLIAM MURDOCK LIGHTING THE NIGHT

According to Volume VIII of REES’S ENCYCLOPÆDIA, edition of 1819, containing Friend Luke’s entry for CLOUD, “a viſible aggregate of minute drops of water ſuſpended in the atmoſphere,” what follows is a statement of the previous hypothesis as to the nature of clouds, the prevailing concept that is to be challenged by his new theory and classification: It is concluded, from numerous obſervations, that the particles of which a cloud conſiſts are always more or leſs electrified. The hypotheſis, which aſſumes the exiſtence of veſicular vapour, and makes the particles of clouds to be hollow ſpheres, which unite and deſcend in rain when ruptured, however ſanctioned by the authority of ſeveral eminent philoſophers, does not ſeem neceſſary to the ſcience of meteorology in its preſent ſtate ; it being evident that the buoyancy of the particles is not more perfect than it ought to be, if we regard them as mere drops of water. In fact they always deſcend, and the water is elevated again only by being converted into inviſible vapour. Having written that, Friend Luke proceeds almost directly to his scheme of classification: Clouds are ſuſceptible of various modifications. By this term is intended the ſtructure or manner of aggregation, in which the influence of certain conſtant laws is ſufficiently evident amidſt the infinite leſſer diverſities reſulting from occaſional cauſes. Hence the principal modifications are as diſtinguiſhable from each other, as a tree from a hill, or the latter from a lake ; although clouds, in the ſame modification, compared with each other, have often only the common reſemblances which exiſt among HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY trees, hills, and lakes, taken generally. There are three ſimple and diſtinct modifications, which are thus named and defined. And Friend Luke proceeds directly into his nomenclature scheme.

(I conclude from the above that Dr. Brad Dean’s hypothesis –that Thoreau obtained his cloud categories from a perusal of the 1832 republication of Howard’s 1803 pamphlet– is unfounded. Thoreau could at any time have obtained the information that he obtained, not out of some special but undocumented source, but instead out of a readily available encyclopedia.)

May 1, Saturday: Uriah Haddock, a chemist of Mile End in Middlesex, received a patent for a method of producing inflammable gas from pit coal, superior in purity to any other inflammable gas produced from the same substance, by the method or methods hitherto in practice. LIGHTING THE NIGHT HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1820

Gas street lighting was quite common in central north London (but not until the 1860s would gas be widely distributed for domestic purposes).

The streets of Providence, Rhode Island (population 11,745), such as Town Street and Back Street, began to be furnished with lamps. 1820. Population of the town, 11,745. The streets were furnished with lamps, and a spirit seemed to be awakened for public improvements. The melancholy tidings of the death of James Burrill, Jr. U.S. Senator from this State, were received here on the 30th of December, and cast a deep gloom over the whole community. On Sunday, the 31st, the unwelcome news was announced from the pulpits of all the churches, and at the close of morning service, the bells commenced a tolling and continued till night, and the flags at half-mast were displayed on the numerous flag- staves through the day. He was a citizen justly honored and esteemed, and went off in the height of his useful Senatorial career. The newspapers, which had a few days before recorded his eloquent speech on the Missouri question, were now shrouded in mourning at the irreparable loss. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

February 9, Wednesday: At St. Mary, Whitechapel, William Smith, age 24, stole two cows worth £36 from William Morris. On the testimony of William Morris, his cow boy James Martin, the man to whom William Smith sold the two cows Joseph Martin, and constable Francis Freeman, a Middlesex jury would find him guilty and Judge Baron Graham would sentence him to be hanged.

Moses Gerrish Farmer, who would develop the electric-striking apparatus for a fire alarm service that would be installed in Boston in 1851, and would invent an incandescent electric lamp in 1858/1859, was born in Boxcawen, New Hampshire to Colonel John Farmer and Sally Gerrish Farmer. LIGHTING THE NIGHT HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1822

After an explosion at the Covent Garden theatre (fortunately not during a performance), its gas lighting was removed and the theatre returned for some time to the use of oil and candles. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

Presumably, by this time, America’s first gas streetlights had been installed along Pelham Street in Newport, Rhode Island — assuming that that city is being truthful in its claim that it was the first city in the United States of America to install such gas streetlights. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

Much of the home lighting of the period was accomplished by means of patent lamps such as this one:

(One wonders if this was the sort of “japanned lamp” that Thoreau used in his shanty at Walden Pond. LIGHTING THE NIGHT HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1823

Quaker Financier Samuel Leggett formed the New York Gas Light Company, which would receive the first franchise in Manhattan to lay underground gas pipes. The Leggett home would be the first home in the state of New York to be lit by gas lights. LIGHTING THE NIGHT RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Gas lighting, although hot and smelly and not all that bright, had become very popular in England, and Sir Walter Scott, being the world’s richest author, was living up to his role by building new digs for himself at Abbotsford in Scotland –a Gothic fantasy that would eventually be completed at a cost of £76,000, which was about seven years of royalty income on his fictions– so he had a system of gas lights installed for the entire place. While they were at it, he had them install a central steam heating system, as well. Because of this, but even more because of his business dealings and the businessmen with whom he was entangled, who lived well and did business out of fine offices, he would spend the rest of his life digging out from under a pile of debt, and having meetings with creditors.

And him “a baronet, too,” as Dorothy Wordsworth would comment when she learned that Sir Walter had partners:

He that sleeps too long in the morning, let him borrow the pillow of a debtor.

I will be their vassal for life and dig in the mine of my imagination to find diamonds.

LIGHTING THE NIGHT HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

Four Approaches to the Writer’s Estate

Approach “Old Money” “New Money” “Sweat Equity” “Just Enough Money” Writer Lord Byron Sir Walter Scott Henry Thoreau Virginia Wolff

Estate Newstead Abbey Abbotsford Walden Pond A Room of One’s Own

Results Bailout Insolvency Immortality Feminism HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1826

Thomas Drummond of the Royal Engineers managed to produce a steady, powerful beam of light which could be mounted in light-houses by applying a method, originated by Goldsworthy Gurney at the Royal Institution, of burning small balls of lime in a mixture of oxygen gas and hydrogen gas. Once this “Drummond Light” was in operation for navigation on the seacoasts, it didn’t take genius to imagine its usefulness in the theater, where it came to be referred to as “the limelight.” By thus replacing the Argand lamp, it was possible to use projected transparencies to illustrate lectures even when they were attended by upwards of 2,000 people. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

So now, Earth itself is a beacon in space:

September 18, Monday: When the gas lights along Unter den Linden in Berlin were lit for the first time, they all burst. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

The first postmaster of Lincoln, David S. Jones, turned over his duties as of the close of business on this day to a new postmaster, Luke Gates, who would remain the postmaster of that town for more than a decade. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1827

April 7, Saturday: At a concert in honor of Ludwig van Beethoven in Vienna, Johann Nepomuk Hummel improvised variations on the 2d movement of Symphony no.7.

John Walker, a chemist in Stockton-on-Tees, England, had recently treated sticks with chemicals and let them dry, to create the first friction matches. On this day he made his first sale. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

Since like 1805 the “Instantaneous Light Box” had been available as a supplement for a flint-and-steel apparatus used in conjunction with a tinderbox full of dry combustibles. This had consisted of a little pocket bottle of sulfuric acid into which one dipped a treated wooden splint. When you pulled this splint out of the bottle you were suddenly standing there with an open flame in one hand and an open bottle of acid in the other — which was not exactly ideal from a safety standpoint. In this matchless year of 1827 the new invention was a friction match. The chemist John Walker sold to a solicitor, John Hixon, a novelty light, a bundle of pasteboard match “sticks” in a round to “pillar-box” container with a piece of folded glass paper (glass paper was a predecessor of sandpaper, which would not be invented until 1834) enclosed. One was to insert the end of the match in the fold of the paper, grip the paper — and tug, thus neatly dispensing with the open bottle of acid.12 He charged one shilling per hundred of these chemically prepared sticks, which were tipped with a mixture of antimony sulfide and potassium chlorate,13 plus two old pennies if the customer lacked a container for them. It seems that Walker had gotten the idea from a local sportsman named Vollum who had from time to time ordered a mixture of chlorate of potash, sulphide of antimony, and gum from him for use as percussion powder in his guns. Soon so many people in the Stockton and Durham area of Sweden would be using Walker’s “friction lights,”14 that he would begin to offer them at one and a half old pennies each in the shop of John Ellis, a local book-binder. Wood strips cut for him by the inmates of a almshouse would replace the pasteboard that had initially been used. Within a year the fame of this local invention would begin to spread. Although Walker would decline to patent his invention and would cease making matches in 1830, when he would die in 1859 he would nevertheless die prosperous, leaving a legacy of three thousand pounds. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1828

Because the first church building to have been erected in Boston, which had been created by “John Indicott”

12. You could also ignite one of these newfangled devices, if you were carrying it in a tight pocket, by bending over too quickly.

According to Dr. Edward Jarvis’s TRADITIONS AND REMINISCENCES OF CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS 1779-1878, page 71: There were no friction matches in those days, only the flint and steels, tinder box, and sulphur matches. Families kept these. Gun flints were generally used, and an old file or any other piece of steel. Tinder was made by burning cotton or linen rags to a charcoal, and extinguishing the flame before this coal was converted into ashes. This was kept in a tin box made for this purpose. It was so light and combustible that a spark from the flint and steel would kindle it. The matches were of domestic manufacture. They were simply small strips of very dry pine wood, 4, 5, or 6 inches long, with one end coated with sulphur [made] by dipping it in when the sulphur was melted. This end being applied to the burning tinder, the sulphur took fire and kindled the wood and thus the fire was begun. This was a troublesome process, for the heat of the burning tinder was very slight, and it required, sometimes, much patience to kindle the sulphur with it. Most families intended to preserve burning coals through the night, yet sometimes these failed, through necessity or carelessness, and some had neither living coals in the morning nor any means of kindling a fire. They were compelled to send to a neighbor to beg a coal or a brand, and when those neighbors were distant, it was with very great difficulty that the fire could be carried in open air. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY in 1734, was in this year being demolished, Abel Bowen made this woodcut for our memory:

Erection in Boston of the grand-daddy of America’s luxury hotels, the Tremont House designed by 26-year- old Isaiah Rogers. Its public rooms were lit by gas lamps! It had unheard-of luxuries such as rooms for baths, in the basement inside the building,15 and eight public water closets, also actually inside the building (not, of course, on any of the three upstairs floors, and not, of course, in any of the guest rooms, but instead on the ground floor, located at the rear of the central court at the end of glazed corridors from the bedroom wings, from the dining room, and from the rotunda).16 This hotel was such a luxury place, each guest was assigned his or her own bed in his or her own sleeping room, rather than the usual practice in America at that time, of consigning various guests of the same gender, who did not know each other, to the same bed.

13. Another account says the head of the match was fabricated from potash, sugar, and gum arabic. 14. Initially termed the “Congreve,” the device would become known as “a Lucifer.” 15. The cold water piped to these bath rooms in the building’s basement was piped also to the building’s kitchen and to its laundry. The tubs in these bath rooms would have been of copper or tin and presumably had a little gas furnace attached to one end to heat the client’s bath water and keep it hot. We may fantasize that perhaps they were in the shape of a shoe, as that was the shape in French and English models of which we have knowledge. 16. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is credited with the 1st water closet in the USA, within a private home. This does not, however, explain anything about his poetry. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY Here is a later image:

At that time the problem of getting water to upper stories, so that there could not only be the miracle of indoor plumbing but even indoor plumbing throughout a structure, was a problem that simply had not been approached. One piece of progress at a time, please. It would not be until 1836, and the grand Astor House in New-York City, that Rogers would be able to get his indoor plumbing above the ground floor, by use of a tank on the roof which could be kept filled by a steam pump. GOD IN THE JAKES WATER SUPPLY HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY Here is where the gas came from, for the illumination as well as for the heating of the water:

LIGHTING THE NIGHT

November 22, Saturday: Concord’s Yeoman’s Gazette included a tall tale which Henry Thoreau would be able to recycle as “We read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveller’s horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, ‘I thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom.’ ‘So it has,’ answered the latter, ‘but you have not got half way to it yet.’”

WALDEN: There is a solid bottom every where. We read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveller’s horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, “I thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom.” “So it has,” answered the latter, “but you have not got half way to it yet.” So it is with the bogs and quicksands of society; but he is an old boy that knows it. Only what is thought said or done at a certain rare coincidence is good.

Was this tall tale original with the Yeoman’s Gazette? –Clearly, it was not, for this is a jest that was first published in an English joke book dating to the late 17th Century:

“A Gentleman ask’d a Shepherd, whether that River was to be passed over or not. Yes, says he, but going to try, flounc’d over head and ears. Why thou rogue, says he, did you not tell me it might be past over? Truly, Sir, says he, I thought so, for my Geese go over and back again every day.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

The managers of London’s Covent Garden Theater announced that they would remove the stinking gas lighting that had been installed in 1817, and return to the use of candles. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 22nd of 11 M 1828 / According to previous conclusion & preparation, we this Morning at 10 OC wnt on board the George & Mary Capt Waldron for Providence where we expect to pass sometime as Assistant care takers at the yearly Meeting Boarding School The prospect was very dull on Setting out but the Wind breazed up & we got to the School about 2 OC PM & just before it began to rain - We were kindly received by Enoch & Lydia Breed the Superintendents & the family in general - & in a manner which was very encouraging to our feelings. — the eveng passed pleasantly. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1829

At about this point, in Bavaria, Theobald Böhm was developing a completely new fingering system that would enable him to bring the holes of the flute closer together. He constructed a mechanism for the boring of holes. His new system used rods to connect the keys, and thus relied on pillars, posts, flat gold springs, etc.

Antoine-César Becquerel’s double-fluid galvanic battery for the storage of electricity.

Thomas Drummond’s “Drummond light” was first applied in lighthouses (Sir Goldsworthy Gurney would apply it as “limelight” at the Covent Garden Theatre in London in 1837). LIGHTING THE NIGHT HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1830

In this decade candles formed of spermaceti, a whale-derived wax, would be replacing candles made from the tallow of sheep and cattle.

The increasing price of whale oil for central wick lamps had led at this point to the widespread substitution of lard oil, and at this point also was introduced a volatile, explosive mixture of turpentine and alcohol termed “camphene.” Such fuels could be utilized in lamps with one burner, or could be utilized in lamps with two burners if the burners were angled away from one another. The wicks of such lamps needed to be kept capped when the lamps were not in use. Camphene would pass out of use in about 1850. In this year, also, there was the introduction of “colza” oil made from rape seed, which would be the principal fuel for the oil lamps of America until the 1860s, and of paraffin, which was discovered simultaneously in this year by Reichenbach and by Dr. Christenson. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

For the following 4 decades, St. Helena would be functioning as the center of the whaling industry in the South Atlantic, with as many as 1,000 whaling vessels stopping by each year, and so it would have resident consuls both from the United States and from Norway. ST. HELENA RECORDS

According to Dr. Edward Jarvis’s TRADITIONS AND REMINISCENCES OF CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS 1779-1878, page 75: Until about 1830, the[re were] tin lanterns. They were mere cylinder, pierced with numberless holes about a quarter of an inch long. The light of the candle shone feebly through, but the wind could not penetrate, as the holes were punched from within outward. From 1830, we had glass lanterns, globular, conical, cylindrical and other forms made to hold small oil lamps, now improved for kerosene oil. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY 17 The following is a snippet from Charles Haskell’s REMINISCENCES OF NEW YORK BY AN OCTOGENARIAN: About this date the wooden picket-fence that had inclosed St. John’s Park, at Hudson, Laight, Varick, and Beach streets, was replaced with iron. This property was held in common by the abutting owners, and was availed of solely by them, each being in possession of a key wherewith to enter it. For many years the neighborhood was one of the very highly aristocratic portions of the city. In 1869 this Park was purchased by Captain Vanderbilt in behalf of the New York Central & Hudson River R.R., and on it were erected store-houses for a freight station and depot.... There were ... several public or roadside houses, which were daily frequented by the gentlemen who kept horses and wagons. These were that of John Snediker on the Jamaica Road, celebrated for his asparagus dinners; “Nick” Vandyne’s, on the hill at Flatbush, where the widow dispensed liquors and gossip; it was at Cato’s that the horsemen of the day convened, notably Captain Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Pearsalls, Richard T. Carman, Edward Minturn, John and Gerard Coster, and a host of others; Widow Bradshaw’s, corner of One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street and Third Avenue, whose chicken fricassees were universally acknowledged to be a marvel and an “institution”; they were as well known as Mrs. Dominy’s “chunk apple” and clam pot-pies at Fire Island. In an earlier chapter I have adverted to the primitive methods employed in striking a light. About this period, however, there was introduced a brimstone match, which was so universally used that children sold them in the streets, with as much persistency of application as they now practice in vending newspapers. These matches were made of narrow pine-wood shavings, planed off in a manner so as to form a spiral, cut in lengths of about five inches, and their ends dipped in melted sulphur. The Manhattan Gas Light Company was incorporated with a capital of five hundred thousand dollars to supply the upper part of the island. Thomas M. Jackson, colored, opened in this year an oyster-cellar and restaurant at 47 Howard Street, west of Broadway; it was a favorite and very popular resort, and deservedly so, as he kept good articles and was very civil and attentive to his customers. He also was popular as a caterer for public and private festivities. The first locomotive in this country, before referred to, was forwarded from this city and operated on a road in South Carolina. The Christian Intelligencer was established in this year as the newspaper of the Dutch Reformed Church. In this year, and for several years after, the formation and operation of boat clubs became very popular with our young men; our boat- builders were taxed to fill the demands for long, narrow, and highly finished boats, usually for eight oars; the “Barge,” the property of a club of young men of our extreme ton, was double- banked and eight-oared. The absence of ferry-boats, barges, tows, and tow-boats, compared with those of a later day, rendered rowing in the evening safely practicable, and New Brighton, Thatched House at Paulus Hook, Hoboken, Elysian Fields, Bull’s Ferry, and Fort Lee were visited.

17. The “Paulus Hook” mentioned here later became Jersey City. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1831

December 22, Thursday: The municipality of East Retford in Nottinghamshire came to be lighted by gas. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day [—] of 12 M / Attended Preparative meeting - some of the Male Scholars went - Betsy Purinton bore a good acceptable testimony RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1833

Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber invented the electric telegraph. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1835

A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: Creation of a book, FOREIGN CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE LIBERTIES OF THE UNITED STATES (New-York: Leavitt, Lord & Company), out of a series of articles which had been published in a weekly periodical, New-York Observer. ELECTRIC The book is a Know-Nothing treatise against the political influence of Catholicism in which the author WALDEN announced the discovery of an internationalist Catholic conspiracy: “its plans are already in operation … we are attacked in a vulnerable quarter which cannot be defended by our ships, or forts, or our armies.” The ANTI-CATHOLICISM

publisher of the weekly periodical was the author’s brother. The author was the son of the Congregationalist SURVEY OF AMERICAN ANTI-CATHOLICISM

minister of Boston, the Reverend Jedediah Morse, the divine who had in May 1798 warned of an internationalistic atheistic conspiracy he termed “the Illuminati.” This demagogue’s name was Samuel F.B. Morse, and you will remember him not only as the person who laid claims to unique insight which led to his detection of an internationalist Catholic conspiracy but also as the person who laid claims to the unique insights which led to the “invention” of the electric telegraph. (In the case of the electric telegraph, it is now clear that funding and organization and social anthropology were more important ingredients of such a success than any of his technological tinkering — for a whole lot of people had been developing these technological capabilities without possessing his good connections and without attaining the funding and legitimation that would get them anywhere.) The source of the present danger, Morse fils announced, was Jesuits operating out of a base within the Austrian government.18 And it was in this very year that Morse constructed the first working model of the telegraph upon the frame of an old picture from his painting studio: The Johannes Gutenberg age of print, then, perhaps stretches from roughly 1448 and the printing of the “Forty-Two Line Bible” to approximately 1835. — Docherty, Thomas. ON MODERN AUTHORITY: THE THEORY AND CONDITION OF WRITING INTO THE PRESENT DAY. NY: St. Martin’s P, 1987, page 284 18. During this year also there appeared a book, PLEA FOR THE WEST (Cincinnati: Truman & Smith; New-York: Leavitt, Lord & Company), alleging that the USA was presently the site for an immense life-or-death struggle, of Protestants vs. Catholics. “Whatever we [Protestants] do, it must be done quickly.…” One of the things we could do quickly would be to call a halt to the immigrant stream of people who were “inexperienced” in our way of life, unaccustomed to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness as it is enacted in these great and United States of America. The author of this paranoid masterpiece was the Reverend Lyman Beecher, the father of, among others, Harriet Beecher Stowe. (She didn’t get her divisiveness –her ability to create an enemy who must be utterly destroyed whereupon we will all be purified– from out of the blue sky, you know.) The most recent such piece of shit I have discovered is by the clown who wrote the book upon which the Bertolucci movie “The Last Emperor” was based. Take a look at the Japan-bashing in that book! He claims that before the 2d World War, the Sun Emperor was positioning a group of a dozen or so diplomatic conspirators in Switzerland to run the world. –Which is not to say that the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere wouldn’t have wanted to take over the world and run it for the benefit of all, it is merely to say that what keeps any one group of us who believe they could fruitfully take over the world and run it from taking over the world and running it is the existence of a whole bunch of other groups of us who believe they could fruitfully take over the world and run it, and is merely to say, also, that we’re damned lucky that that’s so. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

HISTORY OF THE PRESS

There is an argument that Morse got a lot of his plans for the electric telegraph in America from Harrison Gray Dyar of Concord. Dyar was an inventor, and had batteries, and he had the idea of sending electric impulses along a wire and he had the idea of spacing the sparks in such a way as to form an alphabetic code. Using glass apothecary phials as insulators, he strung a wire from tree to tree alongside the Red Bridge road (Hunt’s Bridge on the Lowell Road over the Concord River at Gleason E6) “all the way to Curtis’s.”19

19. And ain’t that just great, the brothers George William Curtis and James Burrill Curtis who helped Henry Thoreau raise the frame of his shanty on Walden Pond are not shown on the Concord map. Did they live in some adjoining town? HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

He recorded the sparks on a ribbon of moistened litmus paper on a spool that revolved by clockwork. The nitric acid that was formed on the litmus paper by the action of the electricity left little red marks on the blue litmus paper. His experiment worked well enough that he got some cash backing and proposed to string a wire from New-York to Philadelphia. However, the New Jersey legislature called him “dangerous,” and refused permission for this larger experiment, and then one of his backers threatened to take him to court to get his money back. We know that Samuel F.B. Morse married the sister of Charles Walker, and we know that Charles Walker worked with Dyar on this scheme and retained many of Dyar’s sketches, so we may presume that Walker or his sister showed the sketches to Morse. We have also established that Morse knew a number of other people, besides Charles Walker, who had worked with Dyar. Is this not much too much of a coincidence? HISTORY OF TELEGRAPHY

ESSENCE IS BLUR. SPECIFICITY, THE OPPOSITE OF ESSENCE, IS OF THE NATURE OF TRUTH. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1837

The first E-mail, actually, depending on how you define it, would have been a message sent when electronic signalling systems were being introduced, or would have been a message sent over the telegraphy in Morse code as of 1837.20

20. Clearly “What hath God wrought” was not the first message sent by telegraph; Morse had built an experimental 10-mile telegraph line 5 years earlier and presumably sent messages over it that were probably no more consequential than the first E-mail messages. “What hath God wrought,” which was the inaugural message on the Baltimore-Washington line on May 24, 1844, was the first public demonstration of the system. Usages that we would now consider “E-mail” may have evolved imperceptibly from file sharing or other practices. The closest analogy we might find for E-mail to the “What hath God wrought” type of thingie would be the ARPANET demonstration in 1972, which clearly postdates the introduction of E-mail) or would have been a message received by the first ticker-tape machine as of 1870. Here is an early E-mail message (note the date) from “The Journal,” a feature of Douglas Engelbart’s ARC NLS system. the message is quoted from the archive of that project, which is now held by the Green Library at Stanford University: RWW 1-JUL-71 14:58 7364 NIC Open for On-line Business (We Hope) This message is to demonstrate we are up on the network open for NIC business. We connected to BBN and are using their telnet to connect back to ourselves. A historic moment. ELECTRONIFICATION HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone patented an electric single-needle telegraph device, which was proving capable of an average of 25 characters per minute, or four baud. (The first system remarkably faster than this would be the ELECTRIC Wheatstone Automatic Telegraph, which would use punched paper-tape readers and achieve throughputs of WALDEN up to 2,000 characters per second (20K), but that would not be coming along until 1858.) Or, according to another old book, Samuel F.B. Morse filed telegraph experiments at our Patent Office, which he demonstrated at the City College of New-York. At any rate, it is Morse’s instrument rather than Cooke’s and Wheatstone’s which is on display at the United States National Museum of History and Technology in Washington DC — go figure.

By 1850 the telegraph device would be being found useful for the transmission of time signals, and as such it would be used by Bayfield to determine the longitude of Canadian cities.21 CARTOGRAPHY

During this year an electric telegraph line was constructed between the railway stations of Euston and Camden Town. “Morse” code, the representation of letters by patterns of long and short pulses, actually was invented not by Morse but by his assistant Alfred Lewis Vail (1807-1859).

“History is the how of now.”

— Austin Meredith

21. During this year and the following two years, however, what would be happening in northern cartography would be rather more conventional: Peter Dease and Thomas Simpson would be exploring and mapping the arctic mainland coast from the Coppermine River to Chantry Inlet. 1,838 Boards of Boundary Line Commissioners were set up in Upper Canada to settle disputes resulting from deficiencies in the survey fabric. The Boards would be found to be ineffective and the Act would be repealed in 1841 and would expire in 1842. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1839

News items relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: •In London, the 1st commercial electric telegraph line was installed. • The 1st electric clock was built, by Carl August Steinheil (1801-1870). ELECTRIC • A mechanism termed a “typographer” was developed, by which type on a semicircular frame could WALDEN be turned to bring a desired letter to the printing point, and then, by means of a lever, be pressed against paper. Several early events in the development of photography:

• The Daguerreotype photographic process was announced in France.

• Sir John Herschel coined the term “photograph” on analogy with the existing term “telegraph.” Telegraphy, photography. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY • The first photograph was taken in the New World — of some buildings in Philadelphia.

• A negative/positive “photogenic” process was announced, by William Henry Fox Talbot. Only five minutes of exposure were necessary: • The very first “selfie” was taken, by Robert Cornelius (he removed the lens cap and stood still in front of the Daguerreotype box for a minute or more, before reaching out and replacing the lens cap). HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1840

June: Henry Thoreau copied his brief notes on his trip up the Merrimack River into his Journal, adding description of equipment, preparation, departure, etc., perhaps preparing for lecture or essay “Memoirs of a Tour — a Chit- chat with Nature” (Huntington HM 945); he also listed topics for writings that were later included in A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS.

TIMELINE OF A WEEK

MONDAY EVENING OF WEEK: Music is the sound of the universal laws promulgated. It is the only assured tone. There are in it such strains as far surpass any man’s faith in the loftiness of his destiny. Things are HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY to be learned which it will be worth the while to learn. Formerly I heard these

RUMORS FROM AN ÆOLLAN HARP. There is a vale which none hath seen, Where foot of man has never been, Such as here lives with toil and strife, An anxious and a sinful life. There every virtue has its birth, Ere it descends upon the earth, And thither every deed returns, Which in the generous bosom burns. There love is warm, and youth is young, And poetry is yet unsung, For Virtue still adventures there, And freely breathes her native air. And ever, if you hearken well, You still may hear its vesper bell, And tread of high-souled men go by, Their thoughts conversing with the sky. According to Jamblichus, “Pythagoras did not procure for himself a thing of this kind through instruments or the voice, but employing a certain ineffable divinity, and which it is difficult to apprehend, he extended his ears and fixed his intellect in the sublime symphonies of the world, he alone hearing and understanding, as it appears, the universal harmony and consonance of the spheres, and the stars that are moved through them, and which produce a fuller and more intense melody than any thing effected by mortal sounds.” Travelling on foot very early one morning due east from here about twenty miles, from Caleb Harriman’s tavern in Hampstead toward Haverhill, when I reached the railroad in Plaistow, I heard at some distance a faint music in the air like an Æolian harp, which I immediately suspected to proceed from the cord of the telegraph vibrating in the just awakening morning wind, and applying my ear to one of the posts I was convinced that it was so. It was the telegraph harp singing its message through the country, its message sent not by men but by gods. Perchance, like the statue of Memnon, it resounds only in the morning when the first rays of the sun fall on it. It was like the first lyre or shell heard on the sea-shore,– that vibrating cord high in the air over the shores of earth. So have all things their higher and their lower uses. I heard a fairer news than the journals ever print. It told of things worthy to hear, and worthy of the electric fluid to carry the news of, not of the price of cotton and flour, but it hinted at the price of the world itself and of things which are priceless, of absolute truth and beauty. Still the drum rolled on, and stirred our blood to fresh extravagance that night. The clarion sound and clang of corselet and buckler were heard from many a hamlet of the soul, and many a knight was arming for the fight behind the encamped stars.–

“Before each van Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms From either end of Heaven the welkin burns.”

“Monday” of WEEK:

Travelling on foot very early one morning due east from here about twenty miles, from Caleb Harriman’s tavern in Hampstead toward Haverhill, when I reached the railroad in Plaistow, I heard at some distance a faint music in the air like an Aeolian harp, which I immediately suspected to proceed from the cord of the telegraph vibrating in the just awakening morning wind, and applying my ear to one of the posts I was convinced that it was so. It was the telegraph harp singing its message through the country, its message sent not by men, but by gods. Perchance, like the statue of Memnon, it resounds only in the morning, when the first rays of the sun fall on it. It was like the first lyre or shell heard on the seashore, — that vibrating cord high in the air over the shores of earth. So have all things their HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY higher and their lower uses. I heard a fairer news than the journals ever print. It told of things worthy to hear, and worthy of the electric fluid to carry the news of, not of the price of cotton and flour, but it hinted at the price of the world itself and of things which are priceless, of absolute truth and beauty. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1841

The gas lighting of certain principal streets of the city of Sydney, Australia. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

A Van Diemen’s Land shipwreck: the Humber, a schooner, went missing between Port Arthur and Hobart, with all hands lost (about 6). HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1843

That the nervous system uses electricity in communicating between different parts of the body in the manner in which a telegraph line uses electricity to communicate between different cities was demonstrated by Emil Heinrich du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896). He thus in this year founded the field of electrophysiology.

Guides in the Blue John caverns in England began to use an illuminant made by combining saltpetre, sulphur, and antimony sulphide, a compound that burned with a brilliant blue-white light, in order to impress visitors with the hidden beauties of this cave system. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

March 3, Friday: The Liberator.

With the closing of the 3d (lame duck) session of the House of Representatives, Whig control over the federal government of the USA came to an end.

Samuel F.B. Morse received a grant of $30,000 from the US Congress to construct an electric telegraph link between Washington DC and Baltimore. Morse’s line would be completed and used for the first time in 1844.

Piazzi Smyth of the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, saw the nucleus of the comet to be “a planetary disk, from which rays emerged in the direction of the tail.” He added that “To the naked eye there appeared a double tail, about 25° in length, the two streamers making with each other an angle of about 15°, and proceeding from the head in perfectly straight lines. From the end of the forked tail, and on the north side of it, a streamer diverged at an angle of 6° or 7° towards the north, and reached a distance of upwards of 65° from the comet's head; a similar, though much fainter, streamer was thought to turn off south of the line of direction of the tail.” King observed the main tail, as well as “a second ray [which] extended obliquely from it...making with it an angle of 10°.”

SKY EVENT HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1844

A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: Jean Foucault (1819-1868) succeeded in lighting the Place de la Concorde in Paris with an electric ELECTRIC arc lamp, but refrained from venturing the opinion that “No source of light probably tends more to WALDEN awaken and ennoble the sentiment of dread than the harsh sputtering brilliance of the electric arc lamp.”

LIGHTING THE NIGHT HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY May 24, Friday: Before a crowd of officials in the Supreme Court chamber,22 Samuel F.B. Morse communicated by telegraph with his assistant in Baltimore, Alfred Vail.

TELEGRAPHY This was the receiving mechanism:

The first message, “What hath God wrought!” selected by Annie Ellsworth from NUMBERS, was sent and returned without error — all this expense as a first step to enable Henry Thoreau to muse seven years later, on February 27, 1851,

“I feel that the man who in his conversation with me about the life of man in New England lays much stress on rail-roads telegraphs & such enterprises does not go below the surface of things– He treats the shallow & transitory as if it were profound & enduring in one of the minds avatars in the intervals between sleeping & waking–aye even in one of the interstices of a Hindoo dynasty perchance such things as the 19th century with all its improvements may come & go again. Nothing makes a deep & lasting impression but what is weighty Obey the law which reveals and not the law revealed.” Thoreau would complete this sentiment by commenting “I wish my neighbors were wilder.”23

22. This was a semicircular, umbrella-vaulted room located north of the Crypt, underneath the Senate chamber. It was used by the Supreme Court from 1810 to 1860, a period during which numerous landmark decisions were being handed down from the bench including the La Amistad decision and Dred Scott v. Sandford. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

23. Clearly “What hath God wrought” was not the first message sent by telegraph; Morse had built an experimental 10-mile telegraph line 5 years earlier and presumably sent messages over it that were probably no more consequential than the first E-mail messages. “What hath God wrought,” which was the inaugural message on the Baltimore-Washington line on May 24, 1844, was the first public demonstration of the system. Usages that we would now consider “E-mail” may have evolved imperceptibly from file sharing or other practices. The closest analogy we might find for E-mail to the “What hath God wrought” type of thingie would be the ARPANET demonstration in 1972, which clearly postdates the introduction of E-mail) or would have been a message received by the first ticker-tape machine as of 1870. Here is an early E-mail message (note the date) from “The Journal,” a feature of Douglas Engelbart’s ARC NLS system. the message is quoted from the archive of that project, which is now held by the Green Library at Stanford University: RWW 1-JUL-71 14:58 7364 NIC Open for On-line Business (We Hope) This message is to demonstrate we are up on the network open for NIC business. We connected to BBN and are using their telnet to connect back to ourselves. A historic moment. ELECTRONIFICATION HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

Samuel F.B. Morse on the surface of things HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1846

Colza oil, made from rape seed, was the principal fuel for the oil lamps of America, because it was a half to a third the price of sperm oil. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

After February 22: and other things, ‘in a buzzing tone’, which the impartial hearer could not make out. The single rider is a raw-boned male figure, ‘with lank hair reaching below his cheeks;’ hat drawn close over his brows; ‘nose rising slightly in the middle;’ of abstruse ‘down look’, and large dangerous jaws strictly closed: he sings not; sits there covered, and is sung to by the others bare. Amid pouring deluges, and mud knee- deep: ‘so that the rain ran in at their necks, and they vented it at their hose & breeches’. a spectacle to {Three- fifths page missing} {Three leaves missing} wood choppers going to their work To be sure I never pryed it up very high –but a very little crack is an unspeakable satisfaction– Though it should fall back again after all. – How many an afternoon has been stolen from more profitable –if not more attractive industry –afternoons when a good run of custom might have been expected on the main street such as tempt the ladies out a shopping. Spent I say –by me in the well night hopeless attempt to set the river on fire or be set on fire by it –which such tinder as I had –with such flint as I was – Trying at least to make it flow with milk & honey as I had heard of –or liquid gold –and drown myself without getting wet– A laudable enterprise I assure you –though I have not much to show for it. So many Autumn days spent out side the town trying to hear what was in the wind –to hear it and carry it express– I well nigh sunk all my capital in it –and lost my own breath into the bargain.– depend upon it, if it had concerned either of the parties it would have appeared in the Yeoman’s Gazette the Freeman –with the earliest intelligence. For many years I was self appointed inspector of snow-storms & rainstorms and did my duty faithfully –though I never received one cent for it. Surveyor if not of higher ways then of forest paths and all across lot routs – keeping many open ravines bridged and passable at all seasons –where the public heel had testified to the importance of the same –all not only without charge but even at considerable risk & inconvenience. Many a mower would have foreborne to complain had he been aware of the invisible public good that was in jeopardy. So I went on I may say without boasting I trust –faithfully minding my business without a partner –till it became more and more evident that my townsmen would not after all admit me into the list of town offices –nor make the place a sinecure –with moderate allowance I have looked after the wild stock of the town –which pastures in common –and every one knows give you a good deal of trouble in the way of leaping fences. I have counted and registered all the eggs I could find at least –and have had an eye to all nooks & corners of the farm –though I did’nt always know whether Jonas or solomon worked in this field today –that was none of my business. I had to make my daily entries in the general farm book –and my duties may sometimes have made me a little stubborn and unyielding. Many a day spent on the hill tops waiting for the sky to fall that I might catch something –though I never caught much only a little manna-wise –that would dissolve again in the sun. My accounts indeed –which I can swear to have been faithfully kept –I have never got audited still less accepted. Still less paid & settled– However I haven’t set my heart upon that. I have watered the red-huckleberry & the sand cherry –and the hopwood-tree –& the cornel –& spoonhunt –and yellow violet which might have withered else –in dry seasons. The white grape To find the bottom of walden Pond –and what inlet & outlet it might have I found at length that as they were not likely to offer me any office in the court house –any curacy or living any where else, I must shift for myself TELEGRAPHY Now watching from the observatory of The cliffs –or Anursnack –to telegraph any new arrival –to see if Watchusett Watatic or Monadnoc had got any nearer. – Climbing trees for the same purpose– The unlimited anxiety strain & care of some persons is one very incurable form of disease– Simple arithmetic might have correct it– For the life of every man has after all an epic integrity –and nature adapts herself to our weaknesses and deficiencies as well as talents. No doubt it is indispensable that we should do our work between sun & sun –and only a wise man will know what that is– And yet how much work will be left not done put off to the next day and yet the system goes on. We presume commonly to take care of our selves –and trust as little as possible –vigilant more or less all our days –though we say our prayers at night and commit ourselves to uncertainties.– As if in our very days and most vigilant moments the great part were not a necessary trust still. How serenity anxiety –confidence fear paint the heavens for us – All the laws of nature will bend and adapt themselves to the least motion of man. All change is a miracle to contemplate when all is ready it takes place and only a miracle could stay it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY We compelled to live so thoroughly and sincerely –reflecting on our steps reverencing our life –that we never make allowance for the possible changes We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we devote of care elsewhere –

Fall/Winter 1846/1847: There the sun lighted me to hoe beans pacing slowly backward and forward over that yellow gravelly upland between the long green rows –15 rods –the one end terminating in a shrub oak copse –where you could rest in the shade –the other in a blackberry field –where your repast awaited you– Over this the wind blew on this the rain fell and the sunbeams and the nocturnal dews and shades. removing the weeds –and putting fresh soil about the bean stems. I got twelve bushels but I have not got all my crop yet? Encouraging this weed I had sown. Making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood & piper & millett grass– Making the earth say beans instead of grass A very agricola laboriosus to the travellers bound westward through Wayland One field not in Mr. Coleman’s report who estimates what crop nature yields in the fields unimproved by man. The crop of English hay is carefully weighted the moisture calculated the silicates the potash But in all dells & pond holes in the wood and in remote pastures and swamps grows a rich & various crop – ungathered by man –only waiting to be improved. Before yet any woodchuck or squirrel has run across the road –or the sun has got round the corner of the wood (world) While all the dew was on. My hoe began to tinkle against the stones of my bean-field– I heard from time to time of oratorio’s concerts operas in distant temples but attended none of them –but this was my oratorio when my steel hoe plate struck against a pebble –and vibrated some chord of nature –ah it has dignified the bean grower’s life this divine accompaniment yielding an instant crop– As I hoed and gathered still fresher soil about my rows –I disturbed the ashes of unrecorded nations –whose primeval lives were passed under these same heavens, and their small implements of war and hunting and perhaps more ancient hoes –were brought to the light of this modern day. The night-hawk circled over my head in the sunny afternoons –like a mote in my eye –or in heaven’s eye – falling from time to time with a swoop and a sound as if the heaven’s were rent –torn at last to very rags –and yet a seamless cope at last. Small imps that fill the air –and lay their eggs on the ground or on bare rocks on the top of the hills. Graceful and slender like waves and ripples of the pond caught up like leaves by the wind –to float in the heavens. such kindred is in nature –the hawk is aerial brother of the ocean wave –which he sails over and surveyes– Those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.– When you pause to lean upon your hoe these sights you behold –any where in the row –such inexhaustible entertainment does the country offer. At hand upon the topmost spray of a birch sings the brown thrasher –the red mavis –glad of your society –who would find out another farmer’s field if you were not there –while you are planting corn –drop it &c You may wonder what his rigmarole his amateur paganini performance on one string or on none at all –may have to do with planting corn or beans, and yet prefer it to ashes or plaster. The passage of wild pigeons [American Passenger Pigeon Ectopistes migratorius] from this wood to that– with their slight tantivy –and carrier haste– Now from under some rotten stump your hoe turns up a spotted salamander –your own contemporary– A small trace of Egypt & the nile in New-England– Where is the priest of Isis. Digging to find worm bait in my dry pasture where earth worms did not inhabit –I found the ground nut on its pearly string– A sort of fabulous hesperides fruit of my childhood found there by the mill brook long ago –or was it dream and illusion of childhood –and now here the dream is confirmed. A possible far future unexpanded fruit for man –between his grosser diet & ambrosia– A faint promise of nature to feed him worthily –as large as his trust is –to be infinitely expanded. Its crimped red velvety blossom –hanging from a foreign stem –is a small ambrosial discourse on the repasts of the gods –pleasant to read by such light as we have. A place of eagles once– ____ In C. is the completeness and success of talent not the obscurity & depth of Genius. Verily another soldier than Buoneparte rejoicing in the “triumph” of a psalm “exceeding high and great” – Appealing to psalms as his authority his Herald’s book (the 68th or 110th psalm “And the close of it, –that closeth with my heart, and I do not doubt with yours, “The Lord shakes the hills & mountains, & they reel.” At the ceremony of installation “Does the reader see him?” His victories are “crowning mercies” “intercalated” “annotations” by “the latest of the Commentators” “Say Major-General Harrison and a number of men, founding on Bible Prophecies, Now shall be a Fifth Monarchy, [to succeed the Assyrian –Persian –Greek –& Roman ones] by far &c v p 94 v 2d by far the blessedest and the only real one, –the Monarchy of Jesus Christ, his Saints reigning for him here on Earth, –if not he himself, which is probable or possible, –for a thousand years, &c., &c – – O Heavens, these are tears for HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY human destiny; and immortal Hope itself is beautiful because it is steeped in Sorrow, and foolish Desire lies vanquished under its feet! They who merely laugh at Harrison take but a small portion of his meaning with them. Thou, with some tear for the valiant Harrison, if with any thought of him at all, tend thou also valiantly, in thy day & generation, whither he was tending’ and know that, in far wider and diviner figure than that of Harrison, the Prophecy is very sure, –that it shall be sure while one brave man survives among the dim bewildered populations of this world. Good shall reign on this Earth: has not the Most High said it?” He too has his dreams. I have endeavored to acquire strict methodical business habits –they are indispensable– My trade is mainly with the celestial Empire that on which I count –sometimes of course you will touch at the Cape –and other intermediate ports for refreshment –or to refit– I may say that I am wholly devoted to business –and love to oversee all the details myself –personally –some small counting house on the –coast at any convenient port –is ware house enough My vessels arrive at long and uncertain intervals My exchange or good houses there I have always to sell. I export such as the country affords –purely native products –much ice –and pine timber and a little granite – which have proved good ventures– To superintend the discharge of imports –night & day to be upon many parts of the coast at once –often the TELEGRAPHY richest freight will be discharged upon an open beach where is no anchorage –to be your own telegraph unweariedly sweeping the horizon –speak all passing vessels –mostly coastbound –some times in danger from custom house officer– –A steady despatch of commodities and supply of such distant and most exorbitant markets –in all weathers and in all seasons no omissions being allowed for –always in native bottoms. It is a labor to task the intellect –such problems in profit & loss –interest –tare & tret –& guageing –of all kinds it demands a universal knowledge –account of stock to be taken from time to time –to know where you are. It is a good port –Walden pond –a safe –anchorage– No Neva marshes to be filled – – Though I suppose you must every where build on piles –good spruce or pine timber of your own driving– –I have thought it would be a good place for business.– not to be undermined and swept away in freshets –with easterly winds. It is said that a flood tide –with a westerly wind and ice in the Neva –would after all sweep st Petersburg from the face of the earth. not solely on account of the railroad and the ice trade either– It offers advantages –which it may not be good policy to divulge. To keep informed of the state of the markets –prospects of war & peace –and anticipate the tendencies of extended trade & civilization –taking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions –at the earliest date. –Improving new passages –all improvements in navigation –charts to be studied –the position of reefs and of new buoys & lights ascertained –and ever and ever the logarithmic tables are to be corrected.– Universal science to be kept pace with –which bears upon all things. You will seek to be familiar with the lives of all great discoverers –& navigators great adventurers & merchants from Hanno & the Phonicians down to our day. To know how little can be done by a clerk –factor –agent –that these are well nigh useless –you must be both pilot & captain & owner and underwriter –buy & sell & keep the accounts.– Plant the common white bush bean in the first week of June –in straight rows, three feet by eighteen inches apart.– fresh –round & unmixed seed. And first look out for worms, and supply vacancies by planting afresh.– then look our for wood chucks –which will nibble off the earliest tender leaves almost clean as they go– And again when the young tendrils make their appearance they have notice of it –and will clip off their stems with both buds & young pods –sitting erect like a squirrel– Harvest as early as possible if you would have fair and saleable beans.– You may save 2/3 of your labor by the last means. The space between the bricks in my fire place was filled with stones from the shore of the pond– And the white sand for my mortar & plastering was brought over the pond in a boat. A few tall arrowy pines still in their youth –were felled for King and Queen posts –& sills– James Collins shanty was considered an extra fine one –when I called he was not at home– I walked about to reconoitre –the dirt raised 5 feet all around –concealing much– Mrs C. came to the passage and asked me to view it from the inside –the hens were driven in by my approach–. She lighted a lamp to show me that the board floor extended under the bed –good boards over head –good boards all around –only smoky –good window of two squares –only the cat went through one lately.– be careful not step into the cellar –of small compas highest cottage roof –dirt floor –mostly –hard –dank –dull –opaque –smotherish –agueish –here a board and there a board –which might not bear removal not a fossil board– Stove –bed –& place to sit –& infant in the house where it was born– Silk parasol –gilt-framed looking-glass –& patent-coffee mill nailed to to a white oak sapling– All told. It was a bargain– James returns –tis 452– I vacate at six tomorrow morn you pay tonight– I sell in the meantime to nobody else– Prudent men anticipate the so-calld last owner –you understand –6 is your hour. At six I pass James on the road –one large Bundle holds all –Bed –coffee mill –looking glass hens –only the cat omitted – she took to the woods. –became wild cat –trod in a trap for wood chucks –became rabid cat –became dead cat –and buried at last. Lintel none but perennial passage for hens I threw down this dwelling next day –drawing the nails –and HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY removed it to the pond side in small cart-loads– Penurious neighbor Irishman –as I was informed transferring in the intervals the still tolerable –straight driveable nails –staple spikes to his pocket –and then stood to look on unconcerned and pass the time of day. There by the pondside they bleached –warped back again in the sun upon the grass Gazing freshly up at the devastation — seeing there is a dearth of work – – he to represent spectatordom. For every inferior earthly pleasure we forego a superior celestial one is substituted. To purify our lives requires simply to weed out what is foul & noxious– And the sound and innocent is supplied –as nature purifies the blood –if we will but reject impurities. Nature and human life are as various to our several experiences as our constitutions are various– Who shall say WALDEN what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than if we should look through each other’s eyes for an instant. What I have read of Rhapsodists –of the primitive poets –Argonautic expeditions – the life of demigods & heroes –Eleusinian mysteries –&c –suggests nothing so ineffably grand and informing as this would be. We know not what it is to live in the open air –our lives are domestic in more sense than we had thought. From the hearth to the field is a great distance. A man should always speak as if there were not obstruction not even a mote or a shadow between him & the celestial bodies. The voices of men sound hoarse and cavernous – tinkling as from out of the recesses of caves –enough to frighten bats & toads –not like bells –not like the music of birds, not a natural melody. Of all the Inhabitants of Concord I know not one that dwells in nature.– If one were to inhabit her forever he would never meet a man. This country is not settled nor discovered yet Circumstances & employment have but little effect on the finer qualities of our nature. I observe among the rail- road men –such inextinguishable ineradicable refinement & delicacy of nature –older and of more worth than the sun & moon. A genuine magnanimity –more than Greek or Roman –equal to the least occasion –of unexplored of uncontaminated descent. Greater traits I observe in them –in the shortest intercourse –than are recorded of Epaminondas Socrates –or Cato– The most famous philosophers & poets seem infantile –in comparison with these easy profligate giants. with faces homely –hard and scarred like the rocks –but human & wise –embracing –copt & musselman –all races & nations. One is a famous pacha –or sultan in disguise A fineness which is commonly thought to adorn the drawing rooms only There is no more real rudeness in laborers –and washerwomen than in Gentlemen & ladies Under some ancient wrinkled –almost forlorn visage –as of Indian chieftain slumber the world famous humanities of man. There is the race –& you need look no farther. You can tell a nobleman’s head among a million –though he may be shovelling gravel six rods off in the midst of a gang –with a cotton handkerchief tied about it– Such as are to succeed the worthies of history– It seems no disadvantage, their humble occupation and that they take no airs upon themselves Civilization seems to make bright the superficial film of the eye Most men are wrecked upon their consciousness –morally –intellectually –and humanly. ____ A place of pines –of forest scenes and events visited by successive nations of men all of whom have successively fathomed it– And still its water is green & pellucid not an intermittent spring –somewhat perennial in it– While the nations pass away. A true well –a gem of the first water –which concord wears in her coronet. looking blue as amethyst or solidified azure far off as it is drawn through the streets. Green in the deeps –blue in the shallows– Perhaps the grass is a denser deeper heaven ____ The works of Landor –Coleridge –Wordsworth –contain quotable sentences –gems –in the midst of much that THOMAS CARLYLE is dull and comparatively of little value– In Carlyle there is as little to quote as in the conversation of a vivacious and eloquent speaker– What you would quote is his vivacity. But some deliberate –tedious –stuttering old gentleman will say some thing more memorable. —— Some whiter & cleaner sand I brought over from the opposite shore of the pond in a boat sunk to its edge by the load –scarcely rippling the surface –convey me and my spade and wheel barrow and several cart loads at once – There is no more beautiful conveyance –than this of water carriage.– without jar –or scar. a high-way that never need be mended. In winter nights the booming of the ice in the pond restless in its bed, that would fain turn over– And the cracking of the ground with frost. At evening regularly at half past seven the whip or –I will –emphasizing the last word –sat on a stump by my door or on the ridge pole –and sung its vespers –as regularly as a clock–. Sometimes it circled round and round me at a few feet distance in the woods. Often a red or grey squirrel awaked me in the dawn –coursing over my roof –and up and down the sides of my house –by fits & starts. sent out of the woods by nature to awaken me –with sleepless frisking– A little flock of tit mice came daily in the winter –to peck a dinner out of my wood pile –or the crumbs at my door.– with fast flitting lisping song –with sprightly day-day-day –and airy –summery –phe-be –from the woods side The pewee? came in to my house to find a place for its nest –flying through the windows. Sometimes I hear the bells –the Lincoln bell at night– the Acton bell –the Bed-ford bell and the Concord bells –a faint & sweet almost natural melody there. Now up they go ding &c It was a bright thought that of mans to have bells –no doubt the birds hear them with pleasure. The faint rattle or tinkle which marked the passage of a carriage or team along the distant highway.– The shrill whistle of the steam engine too penetrated the woods –sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over some farm yard. informing me that many restless city merchants are arriving within the circle of the town – – or adventurous country traders from the other side–. as they come under one horizon they shout in warning get off HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY our track heard to the other –aye and some times through the circle of two towns even.– Here come thy groceries thou country –thy rations countrymen –and is there any independent man on his farm can say them nay– And heres your pay for them shrieks the countryman’s whistles –timber like long catapults going 30 miles an hour against the city walls.– The country sends down most bulk the city sends out most tempting wares –& chairs enough to seat all the weary & heavy laden Here comes your cotton –but lo in the down train comes your cloth –to shirt ye citizens. Here comes the silk –down goes the cotton & woolen –up whirls the books and the news down goes the the wit to write them down goes the wood to warm –and the ice to cool ye. But my object is not to live cheaply nor to live dearly –but to transact a little private business there with the fewest obstacles.– Some business more or less private or public engages us all and to be prevented from accomplishing it for want of a little calculation & fore thought –seems not so sad as foolish. My house is 10 feet wide by 15 long –with a garret & closet –2 windows one door at the end –and a fire place A cellar six feet square and seven deep with shelving sides not stoned –but having never come to the sun the sand still keeps its place. I laid up a half bushel of chestnuts which were an important item in the winter’s store –which cost me only a pleasant ramble in the October woods. Flints pond lies east a mile or more –a walk to which through the woods by such paths as the Indians used is a pleasant diversion summer or winter– Our greatest lake– Worth the while if only to feel the wind blow –and see the waves run –and remember those that go down upon the sea– I went a nutting there in the fall –one windy day –when the nuts were dropping into the water & were washed ashore.– and as I crawled along its long sedgey shore the fresh spray flung in my face –I came upon what seemed a large pad amid the reeds –which proved the mouldering wreck of a boat still distinctly preserving its well modelled outline –as when it was first cast up upon that beach –but ready to furnish the substance of new pads and reeds. —— To compete with the squirrel’s in the chestnut harvest –picking ofttimes the nuts that bear the mark of their teeth. —— And again in winter to cross this pond on the ice –is our Davis’ straits or Baffin’s Bay –as a pleasant adventure.– to see the Lincoln hills rise up around it as a center –Mount Tabor –& Bare Hill & the rest– It is somewhat novel scenery, and not often seen in summer. Also the men seen far over the ice –at an indefinite distance –fishing for pickerel and moving slowly to and fro– You are uncertain whether giants or pigmies –like sealers with their wolvish dogs– They loom up like something fabulous & incredible. Norse-like. Where 190 acres of the ocean stream have flown under the ground to make their appearance here. And west fair Haven lake not quite so far– This is our lake country. Flints –going to which you cross Goose pond –where a whole colony of muskrats inhabits & have raised their cabins high above the ice –but not one is seen abroad. —— I expect of any lecturer that he will read me a more or less simple & sincere account of his life –of what he has done & thought. Not so much what he has read or heard of other mens lives –and actions– But some such account as he would put into a letter to his kindred if in a distant land –describing his outward circumstances and any little adventures that he might have –and also his thoughts and feelings about them there. He who gives us only the results of other men’s living though with brilliant temporary success –we may in some measure justly accuse of having defrauded us of our time– We want a man to give us that which was most precious to him –not his lifes blood but even that for which his life’s blood circulated what he has got by living– If any thing ever yielded him pure pleasure or instruction –let him communicate it. The Miser must tell us how much he loves wealth and what means he takes to accumulate it– He must describe those facts which he knows & loves better than any body else. He must not lecture on Missions & the Temperance The mechanic will naturally lecture about his trade the farmer about his farm and every man about that which he compared with other men –knows best. Yet incredible mistakes are made– I have heard an Owl lecture with a perverse show of learning upon the solar microscope –and chanticlere upon nebulous stars When both ought to have been sound asleep in a hollow tree –or upon a hen roost. When I lectured here before this winter I heard that some of my towns men had expected of me some account of my life at the pond –this I will endeavor to give tonight. I find that no way of doing or thinking however ancient is to be trusted. What every body echoes or in silence passes by may turn out to be sheer falsehood at last– As it were the mere smoke of opinion falling back in cinders which some thought –a cloud that would sprinkle fertile rain upon their fields. One says you cant live so and so –it is madness –on vegetable food solely –or mainly –or it furnishes nothing to make bones with –walking behind his oxen –and so religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones. Certain things are absolute necessaries of life in some circles –the most helpless and diseased –in others certain other or fewer things –and in others fewer still –and still what the absolutely indispensable are has never been determined I know a robust and hearty mother who thinks that her son who died abroad –came to his end by HANGING living too low, as she had since learned that he drank only water– Men are not inclined to leave off hanging men –today –though they will be to-morrow. I heard of a family in Concord this winter which would have starved, if it had not been for potatoes –& tea & coffee. —— It has not been my design to live cheaply but only to live as I could not devoting much time to getting a living– I made the most of what means were already got. —— HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY To determine the character of our life and how adequate it is to the occasion –just try it by any test –as for instance that this same sun is seen in Europe & in America at the same time –that these same stars are visible in 24 hours to 2/3 the inhabitants of the globe –and who shall say to how many inhabitants of the universe– What farmer in his field lives according even to this somewhat trivial material fact. I just looked up at a fine twinkling star –and thought that a voyager whom I know now many days sail from this coast –might possibly be looking up at that same star with me– The stars are the apexes of important triangles. There is always the possibility –the possibility I say of being all –or remaining a particle in the universe Perhaps we may distribute the necessaries of life under the several heads of food –clothing –shelter –& fuel And this suggests how nearly the expression “animal heat” –is to being synonymous with animal life. Clothing –shelter –& fuel warm us outwardly– I have read that the New Hollander goes naked in a pretty cold winter –and warms his body by putting his feet close to a hot fire –though the rest of the body may be in frost– On the other hand food according to Liebig is the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion which is going on in the lungs. In cold weather we want more of this fuel –in summer less It is necessary then to keep warm to keep the vital heat in us –to banish cold from the trunk and the extremities. The summer is a sort of elysian life time to man– fuel –except to cook his food –is is then unnecessary and the sun is his fire –and the fruits are many of them cooked by its rays. Clothing and shelter are more than half What did the dispensed with even in our climate– And food is more various & more easily obtained– bison mean To many creatures there is only one necessary of life –food –to the Bison –it is the palatable grass of the prairie. to Thoreau? And none of the brute creation require more than food & shelter. To the elevation & ennoblement of mankind what are called the luxuries & even many of the comforts of life are not only not indispensable but hinderances With respect to luxuries & comforts the wise have ever lived a more simple & meagre life than the poor some not wise will go to the other side of the glob –to barbarous & unhealthy regions –and devote themselves to trade for ten years –in order that they may live in New England at last. The ancient philosophers were a class of men than whom none were poorer in respect to outward riches –none so rich in respect to inward. None can be an impartial and wise observer of human life –but from the vantage ground of the barest the most simple & independent life. when a man is warmed by the several modes I have described –what next does he want –not surely more warmth of the same kind –as more and nicer food –larger and more splendid houses –& the like –but to adventure into life –a little –his vacation having commenced– As science which is poetry professed by the civilized state – measuring the unfathomed with its telescope –& microscope –but feebly & partially –we want something more comprehensive & assertive which may be called con-science perhaps –and signify a practical growth– —— Critics have been very lavish of the word philosopher of late– Every century has had several. But we have forgotten what the name implies. These men were perhaps professors of philosophy –readers of it –sometimes even speakers of it partially –but never livers of it– It is admirable to read –to profess to speak –simply because it was admirable to live–

Harvard Observatory HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY To be a philosopher is not even to have subtle thoughts and found a school –but rarer still to live a life of simplicity –of independence –of magnanimity & trust –such as all men should live. The weak –the unwise –the dependent cannot live so Some modern men have skill & ambition enough to lead partially graceful & pleasing lives under the circumstances –but there was no bending of circumstances under their hands. Man stands very near to the helm of his life– It is a courtier like success –not kingly –not manly. With the actual life of man for the problem to see how you can solve it. But where are the progenitors of a nobler race of men? We are pigmies & dwarfs – – The founders of nations —— In these days in in this country a few implements –light –& stationary and access to a few books –will rank next to the necessaries –but can all be obtained at a very trifling cost Under the head of clothing is to ranked bedding or night-clothes. We are very anxious to keep the animal heat in us –what pains we take with our beds –robbing the nests of birds & their breasts –this shelter within a shelter –as the mole has a bed of leaves and grass at the end of its burrow. —— In the summer I caught fish occasionally in the pond –but since sept. have not missed them. —— Of a life of luxury –the fruit is luxury in literature or in art. —— In a man or his work over all special excellence or failure, prevails the general authority or value Almost any man knows how to earn money –but not one in a million knows how to spend it. If he had known how to spend it he would never have earned it. —— The philosopher is in advance of his age not merely in his discourse but in his life –in the form & outward mode of it. He is not fed –clothed –warmed –sheltered like other men– How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men. The body is so perfectly subjugated by the mind that it prophecies the sovereignty of the latter over the whole of nature. The instincts are to a certain extent a sort of independent nobility –of equal date with the crown. They are perhaps the mind of our ancestors subsided in us. The experience of the race– I have thought sometimes when going home through the woods at night –star-gazing all the way –till I was aroused from my reflections by finding my door before me –that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should have forsaken it– As the hand finds its way to the mouth without assistance. All matter indeed is capable of entertaining thought. —— Why do men degenerate.– what makes families run-out? What is the nature of that luxury that ennervates nations and is there none of it in our lives? Are we founders of a race. Men frequently say to me I should think you would feel lonely down there– I should think you would want to be nearer to folks rainy days & nights especially. How far apart dwell the most distant inhabitants of those stars the breadth of whose disks cannot be appreciated by our instruments. But what after all do we want to dwell near to?– not mainly to the depot or to many men –not to the post office or the bar room –or the meeting house or school house –or Beacon hill or the Five points where men are more numerous than any where – – but rather I should say to the source of our life –whence in all our experience we have found that to issue. As the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. But most men are not so wise as a tree or rather are like those trees which being badly located make only wood & leaves and bear no fruit. This will vary with different natures of course –but this is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar. What is the great attraction in cities? It is universally admitted that human beings invariably degenerate there – and do not propagate their kind.– Yet the prevailing tendency is to the city life –whether we move to Boston or stay in Concord. We are restless to pack up our furniture and move into a more bustling neighborhood but we are proportionally slow to rent a new mode of living –or rather to rend the old. —— I one evening overtook one of my towns men on the Walden road –driving a pair of cattle to market –who enquired of me how I could bring my mind to give up so many of the comforts of life– I answered that I was very sure I liked it passably well.– I was not joking. And so I went home to my bed –& left him to pick his way HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY through the darkness and the mud to Brighton which place he would reach some time in the morning.

This is the Brighton to which Thoreau was referring. At another time I over took another towns-man in the same woods going to Boston by night with a single horse- load of wood –he was plainly a hard working and rather straitened man –getting on to his wheel when he ascended a hill to assist his horse– He told me how much it cost him to live –he must have so much pork –and tea & coffee and molasses –and beside lay up something against a sick day –for he had already come near dying several times. In fact I never saw a rich man who knew how to spend his money –commonly they wear no better clothes –they build no better houses –that their neighbors– For while they have been accumulating property, they have not been cultivating taste nor wisdom. Even with money you might do something grander –& more imposing– What they give is not a gift but rather so much abandoned to mankind –though it be the tenth part of their income annually relinquished A small sum would really do much good if the donor spent himself with it and did not relinquish it to some distant society whose managers & secretary & treasurers do the good or the evil with it– How much might be done for this town –with a hundred dollars! I could provide a select course of Lectures for the summer or winter –which would be an incalculable benefit to every inhabitant of the town –with a thousand-dollars I could purchase for this town a more complete & select library than exists in the state out of Cambridge & Boston – perhaps a more available one than any. –Men sit palsied and helpless –their money –buried. After all those who do most good with money do it with the least –because they can do better than to acquire it. ——

November: A comment about a new form of vandalism appeared in the Scientific American magazine: If there is any one crime which should excite universal indignation, it is the sneaking villainy of cutting the wires of the magnetic telegraph. This scoundrelism, if not checked by the vigilance of the whole community, appears likely to deprive the public of the important benefits to be derived from this greatest invention of the age. It is supposed by some that this mischief proceeds from sheer envy against the rapidly advancing HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY honor and prosperity of our country, under a system of free 24 TELEGRAPHY institutions and unbridled enterprise.

24. One might think of other crimes of the period for which this level of righteous indignation would have been even more appropriate. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1850

Camphene, a mixture of turpentine and alcohol which is highly volatile and explosive but had for reasons of economy been used in lamps since 1830, at this point passed out of use. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

In Chicago, gas lamps were erected on Lake Street and several adjacent blocks. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

Allan Pinkerton escaped the constraints of his job with the city of Chicago to found his own Private Detection Agency, one of the first of its kind. It was just a fact of the times that local police forces were understaffed, underpaid, and corrupt. Often they couldn’t stir themselves to go out of their way to catch a dangerous criminal, if that person had left their jurisdiction and was therefore no longer their problem. Soon it would become known, however, that these relentless “Pinks,” when it was made worth their while, were going to trail a criminal from one end of the continent to the other. Those who could afford to pay for it were, one way or another, going to be able to obtain the completion of their vengeance with a polite nod to the criminal justice system.

The Lawrence Academy at Groton, Massachusett’s library, that had been established with a purchase of 86 new books in 1828, at this point comprised 2,650 volumes of which 2,400 had been gifted by alumnus Amos Lawrence. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1854

Thomas Alva Edison in America and Joseph W. Swann in England did not invent the 1st lightbulbs, a month apart, as of 1880. They merely created two of the 1st cost-effective lightbulbs. A watchmaker in Germany, Heinrich Goebel, had already invented electric lightbulbs as of this Year of Our Lord 1854.

Electric street lighting would already be on certain London streets as of 1878, and, where and when I grew up, the first electrically lighted municipality was known to be our home town of Wabash, Indiana. We school kids were taken on a walking excursion to our county museum in our new courthouse, where we could view this blackened preserved apparatus which had been positioned atop the old courthouse’s cupola in the year 1880 — the highest available elevation. We were told that if they turned it on, it would still work. We’re even in the ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA, page 505 of Volume X in my 1979 home edition — and they wouldn’t lie to us, ever. Some mottos: • “London’s a big place, but this whole world’s been here for the same length of time.” • “Former residents of Wabash, Indiana are known for their need of illumination.” • “I have some electricity to sell — I wonder what I could persuade people to use it for.”

This must have been a very similar circumstance to that faced by the Irvine boys, on their ranch in Southern California’s Orange County. They were growing grass, which grew cows, which they sold for hides and beef. They were cowpokers, and they were doing OK but were not doing outstandingly. They looked at each other across the dinnertable one night, and mused “What have we really got to offer the world?” And the answer was obvious: they had water in the middle of what in many years was a virtual desert. So they posed their question as “We have something to sell people — how could we encourage people to come here and buy it?” The result is beautiful Irvine California, run in the background by a bunch of inheritors riding around in Mercedes Bentzs, the owner/managers of the Irvine Ranch Water Authority. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1857

February: The Town Company of Hyatt in the Kansas Territory was created, with W.F.M. Arny as its 1st President and C.J. Farley as its 1st Secretary. A plat of this townsite was filed in the district land office at Lecompton, and in the office of the Probate Judge of Anderson County. THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION

August Bondi laid out the town of Greeley in the Kansas Territory. He would be appointed postmaster in the same year, and would hold this office for one year. From that point until the civil war he would be the conductor of the underground railway station at Greeley.

“WE MUST REMEMBER THAT 25 WE WERE ONCE SLAVES IN EGYPT.”

Augustus Wattles became one of the founders of Moneka in the Kansas Territory, to the northwest of present- day Mound City in the central-eastern part of the state.

The project to create a University of Kansas atop Mount Oread in Lawrence was getting exactly nowhere. Amos Adams Lawrence therefore reallocated his offer of at least $10,000 in the direction of a system of common schools for Kansas, that would be more realistic “at this early day.” Lawrence transferred the notes in question to Charles Robinson and Samuel C. Pomeroy as trustees, at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, and rolled in an additional $1,000 in the stock of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, the whole sum coming at this point to $12,696.14. This was endowment money: only the interest earned annually by this sum could be spent. Half of the annual interest income would go toward the support of common schools in Kansas settlements, while the other half would go toward the support of Sunday schools and toward supplying them with books. Only if Lawrence were to die without giving further orders could the money go to the college, and even then, only after Kansas entered the federal Union as a free state. If Kansas were to enter as a slave state, the trustees Robinson and Pomeroy would be obligated to return the principal and all accumulated interest to Lawrence or his heirs.

John Moule patented what he termed “photogen,” also to be known as “Bengal fire,” a compound of saltpetre, sulphur, and antimony sulphide that burned with a brilliant blue-white light useful for photography. In fact said compound had been in use since 1843, in the Blue John caverns of England, to light the caverns briefly in order to impress visitors with their hidden wonders, but Moule was the first to sense its commercial importance for the art of photography. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

25. From the Passover service. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1858

January: A report about lamp fuel in the Scientific American magazine: Whale oils are in comparatively limited use for illumination and are becoming more limited every year. Sperm oil has no superior among all the burning fluids, but it has become so dear that cheaper substitutes have been sought and obtained. The most common of these is a compound of alcohol and turpentine, commonly known by the name of burning fluid, which is very cheap and cleanly. This fluid was first brought into public use in 1830. Were it not so volatile, no burning fluid could be more desirable. Horrible accidents, causing death in many instances, have occurred from the explosion of lamps, hence a safer substitute is desirable. LIGHTING THE NIGHT HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1859

July: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. had a severe fit, induced evidently by overwork, or by the stress of his secret activities as the legal counselor for the Secret “Six” conspiracy to fund the activities of Captain John Brown.

At 11 Pearl Street in Salem, Massachusetts, Moses Gerrish Farmer lit the parlor of his home with a lamp on each side of the mantelpiece. When you looked closely at the glow at the top of the Farmer family’s lamps, what you saw was not flame, but instead lines of light. This was being emitted by platinum wire that Farmer was making to glow by connecting it to wet cell batteries and running a current of electricity through it. After awhile Farmer would switch back from this curiosity to the common type of lamp, for to light one’s parlor in this manner at this time turned out to cost not just more than gas, but four times more than gas.26

LIGHTING THE NIGHT HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1860

Joseph Wilson Swan began development of carbon-filament electric light bulbs. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

Electric lighting began to be installed in theatres. (This was, however, not universal, as for instance small theatre that would open in Fortaleza, Brazil in 1910 would be fitted initially for gas jets rather than for electricity, and would successfully operate in that mode for eight years.) LIGHTING THE NIGHT

It was in approximately this period that the Tonawanda Guard Lock was removed when its portion of the Erie Canal was enlarged.

A sign of the times: the New York canal town of Canal was renamed Memphis. During this year the Grand Trunk railroad line was opened between Québec and Rivière du Loup. The railroad seemed triumphant over the canal and over the toll road. During this year, as an early step toward the development of an internal combustion engine, Jean-Étienne Lenoir devised a mechanism in which a carburetor mixed liquid hydrocarbons (illuminating gas) with air and then detonated the resultant by means of a spark of electricity. It did not occur to anyone at this point, to compress the mixture prior to ignition.

During the 1860s and 1870s most of the locomotives introduced in the Boston vicinity were being constructed in Taunton by the design team of William Mason and W.F. Fairbanks. They were diamond-stack eight- wheelers. But what sort of locomotives had been being used on the Boston to Fitchburg railroad that ran past Walden Pond, while Henry Thoreau lived in his cabin there? Does anyone know?

26. And I’ll bet you had supposed that when electric lighting came along in a much later timeframe, it came about due to sheer human creativity rather than due to relative costs in an economy of choices! –You have supposed that because you have succumbed to the “great man” school of history, as sponsored by one of our national history’s candidate great men, the trumpet-tooting self- proclaiming Thomas Alva Edison. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1861

February 4, Monday: Archduke Rainer of Austria, cousin of the emperor, replaced Johann Bernhard, Count Rechberg und Rothenlöwe as prime minister of Austria.

Klangfiguren op.251, a waltz by Johann Strauss, was performed for the initial time, in the Sophiensaal, Vienna.

131 delegates from 21 states met at a peace convention in Washington in an attempt to find a compromise between the states. Meanwhile, 42 delegates from South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida met in convention at Montgomery, Alabama to adopt a provisional constitution. Jefferson Davis was elected President of the Confederate States of America:

US CIVIL WAR Nadar applied for a patent for his technique of taking photographs with the light of an electric carbon-arc lamp. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

2d Lieutenant George N. Bascom, on the basis of the false complaint registered by the cattle rancher John Ward, had taken 60 troopers and had sought out Cochise’s band to recover Ward’s stepson and perhaps also a few of the stolen cattle. Cochise protested his utter innocence and then managed to escape. He would raid the Butterfield station, killing one of its employees and taking another employee prisoner. He would then capture a small wagon train, in the process killing 8 Mexicans, and would offer 3 American hostages in return for HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY hostages held by Bascom. This offer would be refused: the US does not bargain with terrorists.

[THOREAU MADE NO ENTRY IN HIS JOURNAL FOR FEBRUARY 4th] HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1862

May: Nadar exhibited a photograph of a human hand that had been produced by means of electric light. LIGHTING THE NIGHT HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1865

In Auckland, New Zealand, some of the streets were lit by gas for the 1st time. Maori resistance continued. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

The New Zealand Exhibition awarded Dr. William Lauder Lindsay a silver medal in recognition of his botanical researches.

THE MEDICAL APPLICATION OF ELECTRICITY, BY WILLIAM F. CHANNING, M.D. SIXTH AND ENLARGED EDITION (Published by Thomas Hall, Electrician, and Manufacturer of Electro Medical Instruments, No. 13 Bromfield Street, Boston, Mass.)27

DR. CHANNING’S CURE

During this year the 1st usage of surgical disinfectant was beginning to reduce the death rate from major surgery from 45% toward 15% (another source uses the date 1861 instead of 1865, and claims that the statistic is a reduction of mortality rate from 18% to 1.2% — and I have no idea how to resolve the discrepancy between these two very specific and definitive assertions). 27. This procedure was performed upon me at about the age of 12 (which would have been in about 1949) in a private residence in Wabash, Indiana — the big difference being that the black medical apparatus box utilized had been one that the practitioner had just plugged into a wall socket (to do so he needed to unplug a standing lamp). I was taken there by my mother but the procedure was not performed on her, only on me. The practitioner, whom I was informed was a doctor, handed me a naked wire to hold tightly in my hands and then rubbed my forehead with a ring on his finger, a ring to the underside of which, inside his palm, he had attached a wire. He instructed me to keep talking continuously, and rubbed the ring back and forth across my forehead. I remember how the ring bounced and vibrated against my skull. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY The French army surgeon Jean-Antoine Villemin demonstrated by experiments upon animals that tuberculosis was a contagious infection (many medics remained incredulous because they knew that the disease tended to run in families, and understood from this that the disease was a disease of heredity). The Tsarevitch Nicholas, presumptive heir to the throne of Russia, was receiving treatment for consumption in Nice. His mother visited him there on several occasions, and in 1865 the Tsar Alexander II came to receive his last words and to order the return of his body to Russia on board the frigate Alexander Nevsky. — René and Jean Dubos: THE WHITE PLAGUE In England in this year there was a short-lived enthusiasm that an effusion of the root of the American pitcher plant could be used as a treatment for the small pox. This, however, proved to be about as accurate as the old attempts at fortifying the blood by dressing the victim in red bedclothing, covering the sickbed with red-died blankets, and putting red-died curtains in the windows. Meanwhile, in France, drawing on his experiences with the army, Doctor Jean-Antoine Villemin (1827-1892) was informing the Academy of Medicine that tuberculosis might be a transmissible disease resembling the small pox rather than a hereditary disorder or a form of cancer. Louis Pasteur was at this point publishing his “germ theory” of disease. In the New World, the

city of Seattle, named after Headman Seattle (See-Ahth of the Susquamish), was simultaneously making it illegal for persons of native ancestry to reside within its limits. Would this have been related in any way to the development of germ theory in France, or is it merely a coincidence that these developments were occurring in the same Year of Our Lord? HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1878

December 13, Friday: Twenty Yablochkov candles went into operation on London’s Victoria embankment (this made England the 2d country (after France) to adopt electric streetlighting). LIGHTING THE NIGHT HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1879

Josef Stefan of Austria presented the generalization that the total radiant energy emitted from a body per unit time would be proportional to the fourth power of the absolute temperature of that body.

Cleveland, Ohio became the world’s 1st city to be lighted electrically (at least for a few hours) when Charles Brush successfully demonstrated arc lights on its streets.

Joseph Swan of England demonstrated an electric lightbulb with a carbon filament. LIGHTING THE NIGHT

Thomas Alvin Edison developed a carbon-filament electric lightbulb that could be reliably and economically manufactured, with ordinary cotton as the source of its carbon filament. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1880

February 2, Monday: The SS Strathleven arrived at the port of London with the very 1st successful shipment of frozen mutton from Australia.

A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: The Common Council of ELECTRIC the town of Wabash, Indiana appropriated $100.00 to the Brush Electric Light Company of Cleveland, Ohio to WALDEN allow them to make a test of their light, “[s]aid light to be placed at their expense on the dome of the Court House of Wabash with the view of contracting with said city for lighting the same with electricity.” Was this any big deal? –Charles Brush had already successfully demonstrated his arc lights in his home city of Cleveland in the previous year, and precisely the same thing had been done in the Place de la Concorde in Paris, already in 1844! LIGHTING THE NIGHT

March 31, Wednesday evening: A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: At 8PM, as the clock atop the courthouse began to chime, the wire was connected and the four new Brush carbon- arc lamps attached to a pole outside the courthouse (Note: not yet atop the cupola of the building) of Wabash, ELECTRIC Indiana began to glow.28 A threshing machine steam engine generated the electricity. The test was a success. WALDEN Mr. James Waldo, the telegraph operator, was busy sending special telegrams that night, to places like Lafayette, Fort Wayne, Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and even New York, places that had leading daily newspapers that would be interested in this sort of event. The mayor’s wife would insist that she and her husband had been able to read the town newspaper on their front porch three or four blocks away. One visiting reporter would claim it had been still possible for him to see the face of his watch when he was on a train three miles out from Wabash. Therefore, a news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: My home town was laying claim to being the 1st electrically lighted city in this sector of the known universe.29 LIGHTING THE NIGHT

28. Well, but was this any big deal? –Precisely the same thing had been done in the Place de la Concorde in Paris, already in 1844! 29. Former residents of this town have become notorious for their need for illumination. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY April 8, Thursday: For an event relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: The Common Council of the town of Wabash, Indiana voted to accept the services of the Brush Electric Light Company of Cleveland, Ohio and thus become (they supposed, or they bragged) the 1st electrically lighted city in the known universe. The courthouse atop which this light was mounted still sported an outhouse on its lawn, to the southwest of the building across from the town jail.

ELECTRIC WALDEN

(This is not the outhouse on the courthouse lawn—Wabash’s outhouse was masonry.) LIGHTING THE NIGHT HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1881

In Surrey, England, the town of Godalming was experimenting with electrical street lighting. They were 1 obtaining the power for this from a 13 /2-foot waterwheel on the river Wey and thus a local history book (Janaway, J. THE STORY OF GODALMING. 1983, 77 pages, ISBN 0863680054) claims that as the first public electric power station. Godalming had had a gas company from 1836, and would revert to gas street lighting in 1884. It is not known whether their street lamps were open carbon-arc lights or incandescent bulbs, but it is possible that they were carbon-filament bulbs as Joseph Wilson Swan had been developing these bulbs since about 1860 and had recently staged a large-scale demonstration of them in Newcastle.

LIGHTING THE NIGHT HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1882

September 4, Monday: This is considered by many to be the inauguration of the Electrical Age — because on this day Thomas Alva Edison flipped a switch to activate the initial commercial electrical power plant, to illuminate a square mile of lower Manhattan Island. ELECTRIC LIGHTING THE NIGHT WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1884

Some news items relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: • Herman Hollerith applied for patents for an automatic punch-card tabulating machine. • The Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEE) was founded. ELECTRIC • Ottmar Mergenthaler patented a “Linotype” printing machine that cast type a line of type at a time WALDEN (the fumes from the crucible of hot lead/antinomy mix rising directly into the noses of generations of typesetters hunched over their filthy keyboards) rather than a letter at a time.30 • In New York, George Eastman invented the 1st transparent photographic film. • The municipality of Godalming, England terminated its experiment with electrical street lighting and returned to its previous gas-jet street lighting, for reasons now obscure but —we may speculate— for reasons of economy in replacing burned-out bulbs or generating the electricity to keep them illuminated. The earth would have to wait awhile longer before it could become a beacon in space:

LIGHTING THE NIGHT

30. This would be paralleled, in a later year, by the development of the chain-driven computer impact printers, for mainframe computer output, that could slap an entire line of characters against 11x14 green-and-white-striped fanfold perforated paper at a time instead of only one character at a time, thus deafening a generation of tape apes. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1885

Gas lights had never really been bright enough to permit photography, but in this year the incandescent gas mantle improved the ability of a gas jet to produce visible light by something approaching an order of magnitude. (Although the gas mantle was patented in this year, it would not be perfected or commonly used until about 1893.) LIGHTING THE NIGHT HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1892

A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: William S. Burroughs (1857-1898) of St. Louis devised a machine similar to the one created by Dorr E. Felt (1862-1930) in 1889, but considerably more robust. This would be the one that would really start the office calculator industry. (Such ELECTRIC personal computers were still hand powered at this point, but electrified ones would follow.) WALDEN ELECTRONIFICATION HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1897

Some news items relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology:

• J.J. Thomson’s discovery of the electron. (Don’t ask how many of these things he discovered.) ELECTRONIFICATION • Lord Kelvin delivered himself of the scientific judgment that “Radio has no future” ELECTRIC (of course, as we now know, given a long enough timeframe he was absolutely correct). WALDEN •When Alexander Graham Bell got into financial difficulties and offered to sell out for a mere $100,000.00 the president of Western Union, William Orton, took a dismissive attitude: “What use could this company make of an electrical toy?”31 • Graphite began to be manufactured by synthesis (rather than extracted as an ore and then processed).

PRINTING INK

31. Hello? HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1915

With J.W. de Haas, Professor Albert Einstein began to make experimental tests of the gyromagnetic effect (Einstein-de Haas-effect).

William David Coolidge patented a method of making the filaments of electric lightbulbs not out of carbonized cotton but out of tungsten. LIGHTING THE NIGHT HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1926

The White House acquired its initial state-of-the-art electric refrigerator, replacing an icebox that had been in use since the administration of Polk. ELECTRONIFICATION

News items relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: • The 1st public test of radiotelephone service between New York and London, marking the beginning of non-wire communication across the Atlantic. ELECTRIC • Using equipment developed at Bell Labs, Warner Brothers presented the 1st full-length motion WALDEN picture with synchronized sound accompaniment. ELECTRONIFICATION

June: When electricity was turned on in the St. Helena General Hospital — what a difference it made! LIGHTING THE NIGHT

June 7, Monday: Adli Yegen Pasha replaces Ahmad Ziwar Pasha as prime minister of Egypt.

Kazys Grinius replaced Aleksandras Stulginskis as president of Lithuania.

A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: Lev Sergeyevich Termen (Leon Theremin) defended his thesis at the Physico-Technical Institute in Leningrad by demonstrating before 200 students and faculty an ability to generate, at a remote distance by means of what he termed his ELECTRIC “Mechanism of Electric Distance Vision,” moving albeit blurry television images. It was the first TV WALDEN broadcast. ELECTRONIFICATION

October: A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: Dr. Julius Edgar Lilienfield of New York filed for a patent on a “Method and Apparatus for Controlling Electric Currents.” The application completely describes an NPN junction transistor and its use as an amplifier (the 1st solid-state amplifying ELECTRIC transistor). WALDEN ELECTRONIFICATION HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1948

Lest we forget in our rush to praise ourselves over ELECTRIC WALDEN, the 1st electronic computer (the EDSAC Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator developed at the University of Cambridge by Maurice V. Wilkes) and the 1st computer able to store a computer program (the Mark One developed at Manchester University) were created in this year not in the US but in Britain. • However, it was in the USA that a stone racist named William Bradford “Hush Baby Your Daddy Is A ELECTRIC Rich White Man” Shockley teamed up with John Bardeen and Walter H. Brattain to patent, in this WALDEN year, the transistor. (Isn’t it too bad this couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy than Shockley?) “It is not by chance that the American union is in the state in which by far the greatest number of bold, sometimes unbelievably so, inventions are currently taking place. The achievements of a thousand racially questionable Europeans cannot equate with the capabilities of a thousand racially first-rate Americans.” — Adolf Hitler, 1928

• Richard W. Hamming invented error-correcting codes for computers. • Douglas Engelbart took his BS, in Electrical Engineering, from Oregon State University, and went to work at the NACA Ames Laboratory in Mountain View CA (it’s now NASA). HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY • IBM introduced its 604 Electronic Calculating Punch, weighing in not at 604 but at 640 kilograms. This sold, when combined with auxiliary memory units and a printer, for something like a million bucks in today’s currency — and something like 2,500 of these babies would get sold!

• In rural areas of the United States, the 1st cable TV systems appeared. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

1971

July 1, Thursday: A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: The an early Email message, at least possibly the 1st: RWW 1-JUL-71 14:58 7364 NIC Open for On-line Business (We Hope) This message is to demonstrate we are up on the network open for NIC business. We connected to BBN and are using their telnet to connect back to ourselves. A historic moment.

The above appeared in “The Journal,” a feature of Douglas Engelbart’s ARC NLS system. The message is quoted from the archive of that project, which is now held by Green Library at Stanford University.

Note that “What hath God wrought,” which was the inaugural message on the Baltimore/Washington electric telegraph line on May 24th, 1844, obviously was not been the 1st message that had been sent by electric telegraph, for Samuel F.B. Morse had built an experimental 10-mile line 5 years earlier than the transmission of this famous message, and presumably sent traffic over it that were probably no more consequential than the 1st 1971 Email message as shown above. The first E-mail, actually, depending on how you define it, would have been a message sent when electronic signalling systems were being introduced way back when, or would have been a message sent over the telegraphy in Morse code as of 1837. Usages that we would now consider “Email” may have evolved imperceptibly from file sharing or other practices. The closest analogy we might find for E-mail to the “What hath God wrought” type of famous thingie would be the ARPANET demonstration in 1972, which clearly postdates the introduction of E-mail as is demonstrated above) or would have been a message received by the first ticker-tape machine as of 1870. ELECTRONIFICATION

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2018. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY

Prepared: February 2, 2018 HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in HDT WHAT? INDEX

ELECTRICITY ELECTRICITY the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.