Eclipse near maximum projected from 100mm Swarovski spotting scope
I’m in Los Angeles at the moment, which means I got a half decent view of this evening’s annular solar eclipse.
Projected disc of sun in shadow of my head. Click for large image. (Photo:Tim Jones)
The sun didn’t show as a true annulus from where I am, but an off-set 85% coverage is pretty spectacular all the same. The sun’s image is projected with a 100mm spotting scope, and I took pictures with my standard camera.
Rig for projecting and photographing the eclipse.
With projection, you need something to shade the image from the direct light of the sun, and failing anything better at hand, I find my head does the job – complete with muzzed up solar flare haircut for the occasion!
Note, this is all about projecting the sun’s image. Remember: NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN THROUGH A TELESCOPE.
The eclipse started at 17:24 PST and reached maximum at 18:38 PST. I caught the maximum but gave up shortly after because of trees getting into the shot.
Working backwards from maximum eclipse, this is at 18:39.
Maximum eclipse 18:39 PSTMaximum eclipse 18:39 PST
Few sunspots visible again near maximum eclipse:
Sunspots
About half an hour before maximum…
18:10 PST. About half an hour to maximum eclipse
Sunspots come out very well in projection. There’s some distortion of the shape of the sun/moon by this method, because the camera is always a bit off-centre, but I reckon the detail is pretty good.
Sunspots, in early part of eclipse (click for larger pic)
Well on it’s way….
30 minutes or so in....
The first nick out of the side of the sun at 17:27
First nick taken out of the sun (around 17:27 PST)
Craters on the moon? For sure there are craters on the moon. But can you see them in profile during an eclipse? The air tends to ‘boil’ the image so much that it’s hard to separate out random optical effects from real lunar geography. These two shots were taken a few seconds apart, so features appearing on both are likely to be real.
Close up showing surface irregularity of moon
Same as above but a few seconds later:
Close-up showing surface irregularities of moon (as above plus a few seconds)
I think there is a bit of a dip about a third of a way up the limb, but it’s not clear cut. To do this properly, we’d need to take a bunch of photographs and electronically combine them to get an average profile over a few seconds or minutes. Some dedicated soul out there will have done it.
See also my post on the 4th Jan 2011 partial solar eclipseHERE
Case for medicinal whiskey from the prohibition period (photo: Tim Jones)
Medicinal whiskey? Sounds like a joke doesn’t it. But from midnight on 17th January 1920, this was the real deal in the USA, and one of the very few ways you’d legitimately get your hands on booze until the repeal of Prohibition in December 1933.
I found this old (regretably empty) case yesterday in the back of a garage – the kind of place all such boxes migrate to over the years. It once contained Rye Whiskey made by the New Hellam Distillery company in Pennsylvania and distributed by John A Dougherty & Sons; from the stamping on the box, made in 1919 and bottled in 1931.
Case for medicinal whiskey from the prohibition period (photo: Tim Jones)
In the build-up to the passing of the Volstead Act that enabled prohibition, the various evangelical groups and temperance advocates sponsoring the legislation downplayed evidence for the medicinal properties of alcohol (1). It was the sort of controversy reserved today for psychoactive drugs like marijuana and psilocybin.
Case for medicinal whiskey from the prohibition period (photo: Tim Jones)
Like any controlled medicine, you would need a prescription to get some.
Prescription form for medicinal liquor (Wikicommons)
I haven’t found a definitive list of conditions that warranted alcohol as a cure – just vague references to whiskey as a ‘tonic’, whatever that means, used to soothe stomach conditions, nervous complaints, and to aid sleep. Today, we recognize the benefit of moderate alcohol consumption for the prevention or amelioration of conditions including heart disease, and specific drinks – including whiskey – pop up now and again for a special mention.
Other exemptions to the Volstead Act allowed wine for sacremental purposes, and bakers could use syrups derived from alcohol for cakes. Uses in scientific research and industrial applications were also okay. But in general, if you could easily drink it, it was out (2).
References
(1) A Prohibition Problem: Liquor as Medicine 1920–1933. Jones BC, J Hist Med Allied Sci (1963) XVIII (4): 353-369. doi: 10.1093
(2) Discussion and full reproduction of the Volstead Act clarifying exemptions here
It’s that candlelit dinner stage of the evening. Soup through nuts, you’ve been your wonderful, genuine, self. And he/she is pretty fantastic too.
Spectrum of candle flame by diffraction in a CD (Photo:Tim Jones)
But why take chances – this is deal clinching time.
With the table cleared, quick as a whippet you pull out your Ethereal Collapse CD, and with a flourish Newton would die for if he wasn’t already dead, guide your beloved’s eye to the spectacular demonstration of spectra by diffraction.
Your friend will by now be in a frenzy of excitement, so this is the moment to push them over the edge.
Rushing through to the restaurant kitchen with a mix of urgency and discord normally reserved for Bond movies, you thrust your CD into the light once again. But now the disc reflects the chef’s fluorescent tube in an almost unbearably different, and extremely interesting way. The smooth continuum of the candle flame is gone! Now superposition bands stand proud, where line discharge spectra from gaseous mercury inside the lamp combine with the continuous spectra emitted from the phosphor coating.
Spectrum of fluorescent lamp by diffraction in a CD (Photo: Tim Jones)
At this point, you’ll almost certainly be offered complimentary Cognacs – if only to leave the kitchen. But by now you’ll both be itching to get off anyway, back to his/her flat to repeat the experiments under controlled conditions. Or maybe play some Scrabble.
The Kindle’s supremely convenient, and the iPad’s drop-dead gorgeous. So why do I find Clifford Pickover’s good ol’ fashioned hardback version of The Physics Bookso damn attractive. And I do mean physically – so to speak. (It’s on iPad too, but read on.)
Maybe I’m getting all bookish-protective in the month that Encyclopedia Britannica wound up its iconic print edition after 244 years? Or is the tactile slabbiness of The Physics Book a nostalgic reminder of the Purnell’s and Marshall Cavendish encyclopedias of my formative years? Well, it’s the latter of course; I almost feel like jumping into short trousers for a re-read.
But enough of my fetishes already.
The Physics Book isn’t really an encyclopedia, but the word kind of fits given the breadth of topics covered. For each of 250 Milestones in the History of Physics, we’re given enough information to be useful in its own right, but with signposting for further research; it’s a kind of physics taster if you like. And while I’m sure it’s readable in two or three good sessions, I found myself dipping in and returning over a period of weeks. So much for prompt reviews then, but this is an eminently dipinable book.
When I reviewed Tweeting the Universe, I was impressed how the authors tackled the unassuming little task of explaining the whole universe in a series of 140 word ‘tweets’. Pickover’s offering is a different animal with much more meat on it, but he’s still had to work, effectively I think, at getting a coherent story for each item into one page of text and an accompanying photograph. Also, Tweeting the Universe doesn’t weigh 1.5kg!
Appropriately kicking off with the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, the chronological journey is otherwise unsegmented. How could it be? Discoveries don’t just pop up in categories to order. But that also means practical, down-to-earth, physics applications – like the engineering truss – can mingle with less tangible concepts like Pauli’s exclusion principle. And while there’s no talking down to the reader – there are even a few equations! – I think the spattering of examples linking underlying physics to everyday objects and experiences keeps us all onboard.
The engineering references in particular show how some devices we think of as modern were discovered and applied ages ago, even if they weren’t at the time properly understood in a scientific sense; it turns out the first electric battery pre-dated Volta by a whole millenium. In other news, we’ve only recently come to grips with why ice is so slippery – and it might not be why you think. We only figured out how the hourglass works in a 1996 physical modelling study at the University of Leicester (as it happens the city I originally hail from and an area of research technique I used to work in). Other apparently simple observations still lack a satisfactory explanation, like the mysterious black drop effect that happens when Venus transits the sun.
A repeating theme is discoveries being made independently by more than one person, like the explanation of rainbows, calculus, and the laws of refraction: a reminder perhaps that we discover scientific knowledge, not make it up depending on who we are, where we are, or which culture we belong to. There are also lessons in the less than intuitive nature of some relationships, like that between fluid volume and pipe size (Poiseuille’s Law).
The popular association of physics with weapons – typically represented by the iconic atom bomb mushroom cloud – is not neglected or shied away from. Indeed, Pickover describes a range of weapons enabled by physics through the centuries. I knew about the boomerang and crossbow, but the prehistoric atlatl technology, exploiting the principle of leverage to kill mammoths and conquistadors with indiscriminating effectiveness, was news to me.
Pickover’s references are diverse, with lots of modern day and ancient quotations from commentators ranging from Aristotle to Einstein, references to fiction and science fiction, and some pan-cultural associations you wouldn’t expect. Who knew Edgar Allen Poe first suggested a solution to Olber’s Paradox “Why is the sky dark at night?”.
Certain pre-eminent individuals like Newton, Einstein, and Hawking, as sources of particular inspiration, get their own pages. William Gilbert De Magnete gets a mention as the first guy to break god’s monopoly on knowledge and start doing proper experiments, as does Eratosthenes for the shear elegance of his Earth circumference calculation from observation and deduction. Talking of experiments, it’s not the main idea, but there are a few prompts to try stuff at home, like breaking candy bars or pulling off lengths of scotch tape in the dark to see the triboluminescence.
If big picture, left-field, even spooky physics are your thing, ideas like Quantum Mechanics (including Quantum Electro-dynamics) and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle are generously discussed; also my favourites: Spooky Action at a Distance (Quantum Entanglement, Bell’s Theorem), and stellar nucleosynthesis. It’s a reminder we’re all made of star stuff, and that reality is weird enough without us making up any extra fairy stories. Other entries in this vein border on the philosophical (another discipline gobbled up by physics?), like the totally plausible if challenging thought that we might all be living in a Matrix-style simulation. Then there is Quantum Immortality – the idea that across infinite multiple universes we might live effectively, necessarily, forever. Likelihood is after that lot you’ll only be good for browsing the photos.
So just as well there are lots of them – precisely 50 percent by page area. My favourite – I think I go for shots with people in them – shows observatory staff posing somewhat precariously on the mount of the University of Pittsburgh’s Thaw refracting telescope. I also like the shot of Stanley and Lawrence standing by their cyclotron. Other pictures illustrate applications – good and bad: like the squat ‘Little Boy’ atomic bomb sitting innocently in its cradle: a simple photograph that evokes so many complex thoughts. Or more constructively, a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) picture of arteries in the head, for me the ultimate expression of applied, useful, physics. Some pictures are just fun – like Schrodinger’s Cat peeping out of a cardboard box with a “what?” expression on its face.
Moreover, we’re left in no doubt that physics gets everywhere. It’s a bit of a joke across the scientific disciplines, in a sour-grapes sort of way, that all the other sciences are a subset of physics. That’s not the case, but Pickover’s examples for sure underscore physics’ broad reach. I love the way diffusion and Brownian Motion explains the spread of muskrat populations.
So there you go. My impressions and a bit of a content summary of items that stuck with me from The Physics Book. There’s nothing not to like, and despite my reminiscences from childhood, I’m sure readers of all ages and backgrounds will enjoy it – in iPad or ‘real book’ form!
“The truth is stranger than fiction” (Mark Twain and Todd Rundgren)
Those crazy Victorian inventors. What can you do with them? Whenever I research a history project, some totally unconnected but wonderful distraction like this shows up and wants sharing.
Maybe that’s how inventor James Wilcox thought about his ‘profile likeness’ doorknob keepsake idea from the Victorian era, reported in an 1838 edition of (take a deep breath) the Mechanics’ Magazine, Museum, Register, Journal and Gazette: one of the many popular journals at the time disseminating a veritable gush of 19th century science and engineering.
At first glance I thought this was about profiling a door knob and sticking it back on the door; but that wouldn’t really work – would it. No, Wilcox’s breakthrough technology involves filing the profile of your head into a steel tool, and using it to turn a likeness into an old wooden doorknob. Cutting the thus-profiled piece into slices gives you a whole bunch of keepsakes for handing out to friends and acquaintances. Inspired!
Okay, I’m taking the Mickey a bit because it’s such an off-the-wall thing, not to say off-the-door thing, to spend your time on. But in all seriousness, there seem to have been a lot of men (at least mainly men were visible) like Wilcox around, who, variously tucked away in workshops, cottages, and garden sheds, had the will and wherewithal to have a go at the various engineering challenges of the day. And even if some ideas were silly and others came to nought, ordinary folk still felt they had the right and ability to contribute – although with increasing complexity and specialisation that was becoming ever harder; it’s almost impossible today.
Hey, I like Wilcox’s idea – a kind of wooden business card or Carte de Visite as the Victorians would have it. It’s not like you’d forget a guy who slipped you a slice of his door knob.
I also like Wilcox’s self-effacing humility, where after he says “If this has ever been done before, by any other person, I am not aware of it” he goes on to concede there’s still room for improvement – if only that messy screwed piece at the back was done away with. Ah, the compromises one has to make for rapid prototyping, or as Wilcox explains in value-added detail right to the end “My mandrill having a female screw, I am obliged to screw the piece into it; but with a male screw, the operation can be done much neater.”
There you go. A little whiff of the Great in Great Britain :-P.
I guess at times we all put up a mask in public. We might even have a bit of a dark side kept under wraps most of the time. But there’s something extra-disturbing when our heroes show a side to them we never knew, especially when it’s at odds with the comfortable stereotype they’ve come to represent.
Take doctors for example: helpful, trustworthy folk, blessed with skills in beneficent care and correcting surgery. Yet Lars Tharp, talking about Hogarth and medicine at the Foundling Museum yesterday, reminded me of at least one medical man with a shadow over him, and a dark side literally demarcated by the geography of his home.
Hogarth’s Reward of Cruelty. Anatomising a criminal, 18th century style
Those who have read Wendy Moore’s biography The Knife Man will know I’m talking about John Hunter – traditionally tagged with the strap-line ‘Father of Modern Surgery’ – as he doubtless was.
That was almost an accolade he could celebrate in his own lifetime, within the genteel and elegantly decorated reception rooms of his Leicester Square mansion. Yet the learning behind Hunter’s reputation wasn’t gained in his salon, but in the less well publicised back rooms and tiered operating theatre, fed by grisly subjects for anatomy arriving all too timely through the back entrance on shabby Castle Street.
John Hunter
Hunter had cleverly bought the house onto which his Leicester Square residence backed, and built his museum and operating theatre between the two – creating separate worlds.
Not surprisingly, scholars credit Hunter’s situation as the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Jekyl and Hyde.
Incidentally, Hunter was also in his day the top expert on venereal disease, and it’s thought likely he intentionally infected himself with syphilis via his penis for the sake of research. So despite his unconventional sourcing strategy for bodies, at least he wasn’t selfish.
Tharp mentioned Hunter only in passing, but a further remark he made puts me in mind of another scientist with a dark side – Isaac Newton, no less.
Isaac Newton – hanging judge
The Newton we imagine sitting under a tree, watching apples drop, benevolently ruminating his prisms and calculus, is a far cry from the Master of the Mint Isaac Newton, who doggedly pursued forgers and clippers (they cut bits of valuable metal off coins to sell) to a horrifying death at the Tyburn gallows. (There’s an excellent account of Newton’s life at the mint in Thomas Levenson’s Newton and the Counterfeiter).
Tharp’s case didn’t implicate Newton personally, but dealt with the particularly harrowing story of a mother found guilty of clipping and awaiting execution at Newgate, pleading with the Foundling Hospital to take care of her child.
Another clipping offender (The Newgate Calendar)
Her child was saved, but she went on to be burned at the stake all the same; think about that next time you deface the coin of the realm steadying a wonky table leg with a 2p piece (do your own research as to the true present-day hazard of this heinous sin).
So what other scientists’ dark secrets have come out through history to muddy their fantasy image.
Nice guy – some of the time.
There’s Einstein: a nice old guy who wouldn’t harm a fly, right? Wrong – at least as far as his family were concerned. Einstein cheated on his wife, set out unreasonable conditions for their marriage to continue, and paid little attention to his children. And while we accept Einstein was human like the rest of us, that’s somehow more information than we want to hear.
There’s often a conflict in the minds of scientists who choose to do war work: like building bombs, weapon systems, or other enablers of physical destruction; and there’s still a debate around the social responsibility scientists should bear for the outcomes of their work (although I sense it’s more settled that scientists should indeed feel that obligation). Closer to home, as a humble chemical engineer in peacetime 1980s Britain, I lacked the opportunity or temptation to get conflicted in that way, but, for sure, the most interesting and rewarding jobs for my physics and electronics buddies were defence related. I guess Robert Oppenheimer, reluctantly self-styled Destroyer of Worlds and leader of the atomic bomb Manhattan Project, is the text-book example in this category, although if there’s one guy truly qualified for the E-word on that team it’s probably giddy hydrogen bomb fan Edward Teller.
Haber – vilified
Fritz Haber is another example. The Haber process for making ammonia was hugely useful and constructive in the manufacture of fertiliser. But Haber’s dark association with poison gas manufacture for Germany in the first world war – captured in Tony Harrison’s play Square Rounds – caused his vilification to this day.
It’s an imperfect comparison, but as a scientist whose work ultimately saved millions of lives – through the food produced using ammonia fertilisers, but at the cost of lives lost to gas and explosives, Haber shares some common ground with surgeon William Hunter. How much faster did surgery move along because society, with a bit of convenient blind eye turning, allowed Hunter access to the bodies he needed? (Related to this idea, I’ve most recently been intrigued as to where we’d be had some of the more questionable early twentieth century work on brain surgery not gone ahead – as it for sure wouldn’t today.)
What this comes down to is that scientists are just people after all: some pretty nice, some about alright, and some pretty rotten.
On a brighter note, having multiple facets to your sparkling intellect can also be a good thing.
Astronomer William Herschel’s (1738-1822) tale of confliction is a relatively happy one that I think made his life more fulfilling.
Herschel discovered Uranus and built fabulous ground-breaking telescopes. But he was also a professional organist and competent composer, whose first love – and bread and butter for much of his life – was music.
And it stayed with him; Herschel’s cheery ‘Echo Catch’ was performed at the pleasure gardens in Bath only a year before he discovered the mysterious seventh planet. For other good stuff Herschel got up to, see this earlier post.
I’m sure there are loads more examples of scientists whose dark side has come to light through some sordid revelation. But these are the ones who sprang to mind; maybe I’ll add more later. Feel free to volunteer candidates – especially if they’re still living.
Right! Two in morning. Now where did I put my cape and sword-stick.
References & further reading
1. The Knife Man, Wendy Moore, Bantam Press 2005
2. Newton and the Counterfeiter, Thomas Levenson, Faber & Faber, 2009
3. The Other Side of Albert Einstein, Physics World, 2005
4. Square Rounds, Tony Harrison, Faber & Faber, 2003
5. The Georgian Star. Michael Lemonick, Atlas, 2008
Grey Heron with nesting material (Photo:Tim Jones)
Quite a cold afternoon’s walk today; but the sun was up, the golfers were out, and so too were our local herons. I snapped this one just before sunset. He’s a Grey Heron (Aredea cinerea) and common in the UK. (I keep an eye out for the Blue Heron and super-rare Purple Heron, that occasionally visit the UK, but have seen neither.)
Herons nest in colonies, and this one looked like it contained three birds: two adults flying back and forth to the nest, and a smaller ‘second winter’ juvenile that stayed put (the one on the left of the pair in these shots).
Grey Heron (Photo:Tim Jones)
I was surprised to see nest-building this time of year, but the hardy heron’s extended breeding season sees them happily dropping eggs in late February. That’s not to say the smaller bird here is a chick – they leave the nest by 10 weeks, and this one’s plumage is too mature. I’m guessing it just wasn’t his/her shift for twig collection.
Grey Heron (Photo:Tim Jones)
They’re fantastic birds to watch. Very noisy and, to my eyes, especially dinosaury. I also like the retracted neck position adopted for steady flight; it’s like their head goes along for the ride in upper-deck business class. It’s also one way to tell herons apart from cranes.
Grey Heron flying with retracted neck (Photo:Tim Jones)
The Heron’s nest is a large flat platform of twigs in the top of a tree. The males do most of the collecting, the females most of the building.
These last two shots of the nest show an adult bird on the right, and what I suspect is a ‘second winter’ juvenile on the left (tell me if you think differently). Despite the stance, there was no feeding going on here.
It’s days like this that justify carrying heavy cameras and lenses around on the off-chance something might show up. Next phase is to return with the tripod and get some HD movies of these guys. Watch this space!
Like any normal person, I decorate my bathroom with Victorian engravings of anthropomorphised monkeys.
Monkey Brand Soap adverts from The Graphic 1897 and The Illustrated London News 1901. Monkey Brand aficionados might note that between the two pics ownership changed from Benjamin Brookes to Lever Brothers – an early incarnation of the giant Unilever business we know and love today. (Photos of original prints in Tim Jones’s collection)
These two depict the kind of half ape / half-monkey used by Benjamin Brooke and Lever Brothers to promote Monkey Brand soap, a super-popular cleaning product at the turn of the twentieth century.
An intriguing strap line at the bottom of these simian vignettes catches the eye, and, in those contemplative loo moments, piques an interest for further research. It’s a fleeting urge, seconds later flushed from thought – the cycle repeating with each visit. That’s how I know Monkey Brand “WON’T WASH CLOTHES“.
‘Won’t Wash Clothes’ Monkey Brand Advert (Photo of original print in Tim Jones’s collection)
Spotting these blocks of the real thing at the Museum of London prompted further research.
Monkey Brand Soap at the Museum of London (Photo: Tim Jones)
Of more interest than the technical side of Monkey Brand is the way social and cultural historians, public relations types, and advertising scholars have tried to understand the what, why, and wherefore of a marketing strategy underpinned by these pseudo-human creatures.
Monkey Brand Advert ‘The Graphic’ Christmas Number 1897 (Photo of original print in Tim Jones’s collection)
The gist of these socio-cultural analyses is that the monkey was used (consciously and unconsciously) as symbolic commentary on issues around race, gender and class: representing an idea of change in the Victorian mind that went beyond the obvious clean-dirty associations.
The tens of different Monkey Brand ads produced at this time are a semiotician’s dream. For more on this aspect, check out this post at the ‘Notes on the arts and visual culture blog’, and this essay (pdf file) ‘Soft Soaping Empire’.
Got to love the Victorians
From the scientific perspective, Monkey Brand ‘Won’t Wash Clothes’ because it was loaded with an abrasive mineral – probably pumice (volcanic ash) – which would almost certainly put a hole through your favourite bib and tucker. Pumice contains shock-cooled glassy particles, making the soap abrasive.
While mostly used on dirty grates and rusty bicycles, there’s a hint of an endorsement for use as an occasional toothpaste, although this story from 1908, of an old lady wearing a hole through her denture plate, suggests that’s not such a good idea.
You can still get something along the lines of Monkey Brand today, this LAVA soap; ;with ‘Pumice Power’: “The hand cleaner of choice for do-it-yourselfers, coal miners, and oil rig workers“.
Nice to see as early as 1837 Charles Dickens doing his bit to comically debunk the efficacy of infinitesimal doses in medicine. Okay, he’s not quite talking about the bottles of total nothingness you can buy at the chemist and are an insult to reason today, but still interesting that similar ideas were an issue 175 years ago.
This passage from ‘The Mudfrog Pages‘, in the monthly magazine Bentley’s Miscellany, is a fictitious report from the first meeting of the ‘Mudfrog Society for the Advancement of Everything’, a satirical fun-poke at the recently founded British Association for the Advancement of Science :
” Professor Muff related a very extraordinary and convincing proof of the wonderful efficacy of the system of infinitesimal doses, which the section were doubtless aware was based upon the theory that the very minutest amount of any given drug, properly dispersed through the human frame, would be productive of precisely the same result as a very large dose administered in the usual manner. Thus, the fortieth part of a grain of calomel was supposed to be equal to a five-grain calomel pill, and so on in proportion throughout the whole range of medicine. He had tried the experiment in a curious manner upon a publican who had been brought into the hospital with a broken head, and was cured upon the infinitesimal system in the incredibly short space of three months. This man was a hard drinker. He (Professor Muff) had dispersed three drops of rum through a bucket of water, and requested the man to drink the whole. What was the result ? Before he had drunk a quart, he was in a state of beastly intoxication; and five other men were made dead drunk with the remainder. ” The President wished to know whether an infinitesimal dose of soda-water would have recovered them ? Professor Muff replied that the twenty-fifth part of a tea- spoonful, properly administered to each patient, would have sobered him immediately. The President remarked that this was a most important discovery, and he hoped the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen would patronize it immediately. ” A Member begged to be informed whether it would be possible to administer — say, the twentieth part of a grain of bread and cheese to all grown-up paupers, and the fortieth part to children, with the same satisfying effect as their present allowance. ” Professor Muff was willing to stake his professional reputation on the perfect adequacy of such a quantity of food to the support of human life — in workhouses; the addition of the fifteenth part of a grain of pudding twice a week would render it a high diet.”
Owning multiple copies of a book isn’t that unusual. There’s that extra copy for the bath, the duplicate Christmas present you don’t have the heart to return, or maybe you’ve just made home with someone with similar interests – and library: always a good idea. But no one has hundreds of copies of the same title – do they?
Sure they do. Meet the front end of the Huntington Library‘s 252 strong collection of Darwin’s Origin of Species – all 20 feet of them. I snapped this at the permanent ‘Beautiful Science’ exhibition last month, and have just gotten around to a bit of research:
And turning the corner, here are the rest of them:
Henry Edwards Huntington acquired much of his collection, now at San Marino, by buying up ready-made collections or even whole libraries. But some books he bought individually, including, in 1860s New York, an 1859 first edition of the Origin of Species in original cloth – for $22.79 (1). Checking Abebooks.com just now, I see you can pick up the same thing in the same city today for a cool $210,000 (Arader Gallery). Nice investment, Henry.
All the Origins at Huntington are different. Most of the variations are reprints of the early six editions published by John Murray between 1859 and 1872; and then there are all the various languages. The original six do vary in content though, with Darwin making material changes in response to readers’ comments.
Despite the title’s legendary status, the print runs of Murray’s Origin look modest by modern standards:
Scholars have argued over the Origin’s scientific content since, well, its origin – so it’s refreshing to find an analysis along a different tack, like Michele and Chris Kohler’s essay about the Origin of Species as a physical object (2).
The authors mention Huntington’s collection of Origins as one of the three largest, along with the Kohler Collection at the Natural History Museum London and the Thomas Fisher Library of the University of Toronto.
Their research also suggests that many more people may have read the first edition than the 1,250 figure suggests, with 500 copies going not to wealthy individuals (books like this were still a luxury for most people) but to Mudies Lending Library – the largest commercial library in the country. (btw, current Origin sales are a respectable 75,000 to 100,000 units per annum.)
There’s also a discussion on how the content was on occasion not so much lost, but subtley changed, in translation, as in the case of Heinrich Bronn’s first German edition.
The Kohlers’ analysis of price history shows a run-away escalation of first edition values in the 20th and 21st centuries: so from an average £36 in the mid-50’s, to still only £4000 in the 80’s, to a top price of £49,000 in 1999; that’s still a long way off the £100,000+ values being achieved today.
The collector demographic has necessarly changed in step: from pure scholars to business people; but perhaps those working in sci-tech related areas who want, and can afford, to be close to a piece of scientific history. Maybe that ownership requires a Henry Huntington income is a good thing – reflecting an increased awareness of the value of it’s intellectual message?
There again, maybe it’s all going the way of the art market, with rare books becoming a commodity currency. What do you think?
References
1. Henry Edwards Huntington, A Biography. James Ernest Thorpe, University of California Press, 1994
2. Essay by Michele and Chris Kohler in: The Cambridge Companion to the Origin of Species, Ed. Michael Ruse, Robert J Richards, New York, 2008 (Archive.org .txt version here)
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so damn attractive. And I do mean physically – so to speak. (It’s on iPad too, but read on.)
will know I’m talking about John Hunter – traditionally tagged with the strap-line ‘Father of Modern Surgery’ – as he doubtless was.
).
