H. S. Ede visits Stieglitz

Abstract

‘I called on a dealer of pictures, a person really alive to the meaning of art; too much an artist to become rich, more ready to help others than to help himself I took him a paying-in slip on a foreign post office given to me in London by a German artist who had fallen on lean days. Give this to S—if you see him, he had said with a strange laugh. My dealer said I could have brought no better card of introduction, for our mutual friend was a real artist though most people in an official world would think him mad. “There is always something bitter in his messages, but I will try to send him a litde”, he said. I was sorry to have to leave but glad at least to have made this contact with so genuine a man.’     

A Turing test for free will

Before Alan Turing made his crucial contributions to the theory of computation, he studied the question of whether quantum mechanics could throw light on the nature of free will. This paper investigates the roles of quantum mechanics and computation in free will. Although quantum mechanics implies that events are intrinsically unpredictable, the 'pure stochasticity' of quantum mechanics adds randomness only to decision-making processes, not freedom. By contrast, the theory of computation implies that, even when our decisions arise from a completely deterministic decision-making process, the outcomes of that process can be intrinsically unpredictable, even to-especially to-ourselves. I argue that this intrinsic computational unpredictability of the decision-making process is what gives rise to our impression that we possess free will. Finally, I propose a 'Turing test' for free will: a decision-maker who passes this test will tend to believe that he, she, or it possesses free will, whether the world is deterministic or not.     

Darwin's vertical thinking: Mountains,mobility, and the imagination in 19th-century geology

Like other aspiring geologists in the 1830s, Darwin focused heavily on the rising and falling of the earth's crust. I use his time in the Andes to underscore the importance he placed on larger questions of vertical movement, which mountains helped to solidify in his mind. His most impressive ramblings occurred in 1835 on two high passes in the Andes. Prior to his upland journey, he was well prepared to see the gradual movement of the earth's crust, but his time in the mountains honed his vertical vision. His actual travels up and over enabled him to think more clearly about rise and fall, and how corresponding geographies could link the past to the present. Mountains were instructive backdrops to his theorizing, partly because he traveled through them, but also because his time there, linked with other geographies, became a means to foster his thinking both spatially and temporally. He did not think about mountains, but with them and through them. He is a good example of the broader vertical consciousness that directed many sciences at this time.     

The life and work of A.D. Blumlein

Alan Dower Blumlein was a remarkably versatile, prolific and creative engineer whose type of genius has had few equals this century. Following early work on telephony during which he developed a transformer-bridge network he turned his attention to audio engineering, developing moving-coil microphones and wax cutters which circumvented patents held by Bell Laboratories and inventing a system for binaural recording. Blumlein was largely responsible for the logical development of the overall system and transmitted waveform for the world's first public, all-electronic television service but also contributed many of the component circuits, such as an efficient line-frequency scanning circuit the `Miller' integrator, the long-tailed pair and the bootstrap circuit. Before his death in an air crash he had made significant contributions to the development of airborne interception radar, microwave radar and H₂S ground-mapping radar. These aspects of Blumlein's work are described     

ASPECTS OF THE LIFE AND WORKS OF MARTIN FOLKES (1690–1754)

Martin Folkes was an 18 c. scientist and antiquary, a friend of Benjamin Robins and a President of the Royal Society (P.R.S) (1741–1752). Folkes published works in science on a variety of subjects including meteorology and archeology, and he was an expert on antiquities, much preoccupied with coinage. It appears that he was nominated as an executor of the will of engineering-scientist, Benjamin Robins respecting his scientific publications but died, in 1754, having retired from the Presidency of the R.S. in 1752, a year after Robins’ decease in India. Even after describing Folkes’ life and work it is not easy to see what he had in common with his supporter Newton and his colleague Robins; this is a matter which calls for imagination and which we hope to stimulate by broadly describing his life and works. Two major inclusions herein pertain to “Sir” John Hill’s quarrels with Folkes and others, and to Robins’ paper on the “proper charge in guns”, see Appendices A and B, respectively.     

The Sign of Stieglitz,the Art of Evans

This essay examines how Walker Evans evolved his documentary style in response to what he saw as Alfred Stieglitz's overbearing aestheticism. It begins with their first meeting and Evans's ‘rejection’ of this father‐figure, a rejection which became generalised in the history of photography on the grounds of a dichotomy between photographic art and social documentary. Evans came to represent this latter tendency despite his own wishes. With the help of friends like Lincoln Kirstein and Bernice Abbott, Evans claimed a different artistic genealogy, via the Civil War work of Mathew Brady and his teams and Eugène Atget, neither of whom were working in the same vein of documentary as Evans might have imagined. He attempted to remain the independent artist, all the while taking advantage of his various photographic employments and the directions in which they pushed him. In the end, history made him famous and influential as the champion of social documentary, a genre which coincided neatly with his own desire for a ‘lyric documentary’ for only a few years. In his desire to be an artist free from a social agenda, in his resistance to branding, he is a maverick bohemian much closer to Stieglitz than has been supposed, and he seemed to recognise the fact in his last comments on his predecessor.     

Do you know English? The challenge of the English language for patent searchers

The complex and inconsistent nature of the English language presents problems for patent searchers researching the prior art. This is true for native speakers as well as for those who use it as a second language. These problems include confusion in translations; “Patentese”, the jargon used by patent attorneys; terminology, which can take time to be adopted; “faux amis”, words which you think you know as they look identical to foreign words; the oddities of English spelling; multiple meanings for the same words; words that have opposite meanings; synonyms; Americanisms as different spellings and different words; words that are both nouns and verbs; compound nouns, which are often spelt as two words; spelling mistakes; and syntax. Conclusions suggest using broad classes together with keywords; looking for synonyms; allowing for two words in compound nouns; using adjacency operators; combining sets of results; and using citation searching as an additional search, especially if little is found, or the invention is difficult to describe. A thesaurus of recommended words and spellings would be useful if adopted by those preparing abstracts.     

John Collier,Jr

Abstract

After sending off a portfolio of his pictures to the headquarters of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in Washington, DC, John Collier, Jr, became so preoccupied with just trying to survive in photography that he forgot about his submission. As weeks turned into months, he bounced from one photography job to another. Collier felt that he had hit rock bottom in 1941 working as a printer for Gabriel Milan's, ‘a very cut-throat photography company in San Francisco’. Then one day his labour in the laboratory was interrupted by a telephone call from Washington. ‘I was called out of my little dungeon where I was tinting goldtoned baby portraits and picked up the phone and couldn't hear what the man said, having a life-long hearing difficulty’. Collier handed the receiver over to the nearest person, who happened to be his boss, to relay the message. ‘There's a crazy guy in Washington, DC, who wants to pay you $2,300 a year. You'd better take it because I'm going to fire you’. A shocked and elated Collier took the receiver, and confirmed his acceptance with a simple ‘Yes’. Although Collier did not hear anything that Roy Stryker, Head of the Historic Section, said in reply, he immediately prepared to leave for the nation's capital, and became what turned out to be the last photographer hired for the greatest documentary project the world has ever known. ‘This was the climax of the concern that I had to do something about direct analysis and observation, about what was going on around me at the time of the Great Depression’. ¹     

A scene in a library

Abstract

This essay concerns one photograph: the eighth plate in The Pencil of Nature, called A Scene in a Library, which originally appeared in the second installment of Talbot's inaugural book on photography (figure 1). I have already written extensively about A Scene in a Library — and given its title to a book on illustrated books.¹ But it is a photograph that, together with the text that accompanies it, has never ceased to intrigue me. I continue to wonder what Talbot's intentions were when he chose this photograph for his book. Why did he choose it over similar photographs that he had made and could possibly just as well have used? Why did he title it the way he did — A Scene in a Library — when we know that it was not actually taken in his library? Why and when did it occur to him to write the piece of text that accompanies the plate — which speaks of experimentation with the invisible end of the light spectrum? And what did he have in mind when he put the plate, the caption and the accompanying text together? For A Scene in a Library is remarkable — and exceptional — for the unaccountable way in which it puts text together with image. Almost all the other plates have text that bears on them fairly straightforwardly, either explaining how and where they were made or indicating possible uses for the photograph in question. Not so A Scene in a Library, which functions, rather, as a kind of clef de roman, and which has, as I hope to show, an emblematic status in The Pencil of Nature precisely because it is an exception.     

Was denkt im Individuum?

?What thinks in man, is not he himself, but his social community.“ These words by the early sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838–1909) were quoted several times by Ludwik Fleck (1896–1961) and seem to be in complete agreement with his own theory of thought collectives. The assumption that even scientific ideas were not so much generated by the scientist as an autonomous individual but rather by and within the social environment was still considered provocative by Fleck in the 1930s. This article will explore the implications of this assumption by comparing Fleck with Gumplowicz as well as with Tadeusz Bilikiewicz (1901–1980), a psychiatrist, philosopher and historian of medicine working like Fleck in the cultural milieu of Lwów/Lemberg.     

Roget's engineering successor [Samuel Romilly Roget biography]

Samuel Romilly Roget, grandson of Peter Mark Roget of Thesaurus fame, was by profession an electrical engineer. A Cambridge graduate who had studied under James Alfred Ewing, he embarked upon an intensive career encompassing industrial employment, technical journalism and finally original work for the British Standards Institution on the definition of electrotechnical standards and vocabularies. In this last occupation, he may have inherited some of the methodical classification skills of his grandfather, This article traces his working life through a period of great scientific and technological change spanning two world wars     

Dr. Thomas Young—Natural philosopher

This year marks the 200th anniversary of Thomas Young’s presentation of his pivotal essay on cohesion in fluids in which, among other important insights into capillarity, he stated in qualitative terms the concept of the Contact Angle. This, together with the Young/Laplace Equation (relating the surface tension to the pressure and radius of curvature) have formed the foundations of Capillarity theory and practice. It is interesting and timely to review briefly the life and achievements of this remarkable man who formally trained as a medical practitioner. A child prodigy brought up in the classics, with a command of numerous ancient and existing languages, he was a rare spirit driven to understand all physical phenomena about him; a polymath in an age of scientific enlightenment, he left an indelible mark in the humanities, sciences and technologies—in linguistics, egyptology, optics, the strength of materials, bridge and road construction, among many other fields. What interests us particularly today is that he always returned to the intriguing question of how particles are associated and held together to form the various states of matter. He invoked a model of matter being held together by short range attractive and repulsive forces acting between particles and gave plausible explanations of phenomena such as rigidity, elasticity and rupture, and what interests us in particular for this Meeting, because of his involvement in the hydrodynamics of blood flowing through capillary vessels, he made astonishing insights into basic Capillarity.     

Egypt on Glass

Abstract

In 1883 Willard D. Chamberlain, at the age of 35, became Vice-President of the Beaver Soap Company of Dayton, Ohio^1,2, a fact which has not hitherto featured prominently in treatises on the history of photography. There is at least an indirect connection, nevertheless; Willard Chamberlain was very much a man of his time^3,4, and photography was an important element in his later life. In any event, it is not surprising that a man of his social position and affluence would eventually make the ‘Grand Tour’. Indeed, he did this twice, visiting the Middle East in 1893 and 1898⁵. Besides taking his own photographs, he purchased whatever lantern slides were commercially available. We do not know how he first became interested in photography (he left no diaries or notes), but we do know that he was serious enough about it to have a darkroom in his home⁶. Alas, his work was of indifferent quality, as exemplified by most of the 34 glass lantern-slides which he made and which are now in the Archives and Special Collections of the Wright State University Library⁷. However, the 49 slides by Bonfils and nine by Lekegian, which he purchased and brought back with him, attest to his connoisseurship in the matter.     

The last mile: earthquake risk mitigation assistance in developing countries

Over the past few decades, we have seen many joint programmes between developed countries and developing countries to help the latter in managing their earthquake risks. These programmes span the whole spectrum of disciplines from seismology and geology to engineering, social science and economics. Many of these programmes have been effective in raising awareness, in urging governments to work towards risk reduction and in spawning an 'industry' of disaster management in many of the developing countries. However, even as these efforts proceed, we have seen death and destruction due to earthquake after earthquake in developing countries, strongly suggesting that the problems for which those assistance programmes were developed are not so effective. Therefore, it is natural to ask why this is happening. Are the assistance programmes reaching the right people? Maybe we are reaching the right people and doing the right type of things in these countries, but we have not allowed enough time for our actions to take effect. Maybe we are reaching the right people and doing the right actions for most of the miles we need to cover in helping communities mitigate their earthquake risks. However, the issue could be whether we are reaching people who represent the 'last mile' on this pathway. Here, I explore whether the work that many organizations and countries have done towards earthquake risk reduction over the past few decades in developing countries is appropriate or not. Why do we keep seeing the catastrophes of Sumatra, Chi Chi, Bhuj, Turkey, Algeria and on and on? I will articulate what I think is the problem. My contribution is intended to generate discussions, self-analysis of our approaches, what we are doing right and what we are not doing right. Hopefully such discussions will result in a better connection between the last mile and programmes around the world which are working towards earthquake risk mitigation.     

以色列平面设计师丹·雷辛格海报作品探析

丹·雷辛格的海报作品形式简洁鲜明,色彩明快热烈,运用原色元素形成强烈的色彩对比,极富视觉冲击力;丹·雷辛格善于将主题性符号元素融入作品中,这是其作品简练大气而容易被世人所接受的重要原因之一;他多年来对东西方设计融合做了大量的探索与尝试,并成功地将东方元素运用到其海报中,使其作品内涵丰富且具有国际化风格。     

“Venturing Out on a Ledge to Get a Certain Picture”: The “authentic” spaces of Alvin Langdon Coburn's Grand Canyon

The body of work produced during Alvin Langdon Coburn's journey to the Grand Canyon operates in two simultaneous but distinctive registers, yet the predominant critical investigation of his work has been limited to the handful of quite extraordinary pictures that evoke the precepts of Pictorial photography. If we are to come to terms with the larger undertaking, of which these pictures are an integral part, we need also to investigate the photographs from the journey that have not become iconic. These photographs reveal the “making of?” these icons of Pictorialism, depicting the conditions of their production. And what is most curious is that many of these photographs were made not by Coburn himself, but by his elderly mother Fannie, who accompanied him on these adventurous quests for an authentic American West. These two zones are distinguished not just spatially but conceptually, and the gendered binaries of adventure and safety, of independence and domesticity, and of authenticity and mediation, are brought into focus by the presence of Coburn's unlikely companion on his explorations. This essay draws upon a central concept in the theorization of the tourist, which holds that the fundamental striving of tourism — to find something “authentic” — is accommodated by structuring the world into fronts and backs, spaces where the “show” is performed, and those where the performers and their props remain provisionally concealed. Exploring Coburn's modulation of these two modes is fitting since he was, at the very moment of his journey to the Grand Canyon, being confronted with the social structures of tourism that made the original objective of his sojourn — to find something never before seen, something “authentic” — increasingly difficult.     

Lithography: rewriting the rules

Dip-pen nanolithography (DPN) is generating significant interest as a means of patterning surfaces with submicron-scale designs. Advocates of DPN, which effectively uses an atomic force microscope (AFM) as a pen, herald its ability both to fabricate and monitor high-resolution, miniaturized molecular arrays. The novel technology is not without its critics, however, who question the utility and practicality of paint-pot-style nanofabrication. Nonetheless, the relative availability and affordability of DPN tools is allowing an increasing number of scientists and engineers to think small.In December 1959, the Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman gave a lecture to the American Physical Society that outlined his vision of a futuristic nanoscale world. He dismissed reports of fingernail-sized electric motors and devices that could cram text onto pinheads as little more than crude first steps towards true miniaturization. “It is a staggeringly small world that is below,” he advised the assembled throng.     

Obituary – Dennis Hine

It is with regret that we record the death of Dennis Hine on 15 June 2007 at the age of 80. Hine joined the Packaging and Allied Trades Research Association (which subsequently became Pira( at the age of 27 and remained with Pira until his retirement. Hine was a gifted scientist with a natural interest in understanding the world around him. He pioneered the development of test instruments that simulated and quantified packaging machine operations, for example, adhesive bonding, film runnability, crease stiffness and carton opening. Test instruments designed by Hine continue to be manufactured and sold around the world. He is particularly noted for his research on carton quality and machine–material interaction during the 1960s and the 1970s. His research reports in this field continue to be cited, and he was awarded a fellowship at the Institute of Packaging in recognition of his contribution to packaging science. The understanding of carton quality developed by Hine is widely applied today and is the basis for the only national standard for crease quality. As well as authoring many technical reports and papers, in his retirement Hine also wrote the textbook Cartons and Cartoning. Hine was awarded a special degree in physics by the London University in 1947, and then worked during the later war years at the Research Association of British Rubber Manufacturers in Croydon on war‐related work. After the war, he was allowed to present his work as a thesis, for which he was awarded a master's degree. Hine had a genuine fascination with understanding the world around him, and he approached research and investigation with enthusiasm tempered only by a highly structured and analytical approach. These qualities can be seen in his personal as well as professional life through his final years, where he took a serious interest in understanding the treatment of his cancer. Dennis Hine is survived by his wife Grace, his three children and four grandchildren.     

HOW EVOLUTIONARY IS SCHUMPETER'S THEORY OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT?

The generic features of an evolutionary theory which are identified in the conceptional discussion of the present paper can be shown to be present already in Schumpeter's 1912 work, The Theory of Economic Development . None the less, it is argued that Schumpeter fell short of a level of generality by which he would have succeeded in providing a true foundation for evolutionary economics. The reason is his eagerness--very clearly visible in the "lost" seventh chapter--to align his theory with the economic reasoning of contemporary "pure" economic theory that was moulded in an equilibrium-oriented heuristic and the methodology of comparative statics. Schumpeter's conception--which, in opposing the idea of borrowing from Darwinian thought, he called "development"--is rather a special theory of the unsteady capitalist growth process passing through booms and crises. Throughout all of Schumpeter's writings the notion of development is therefore closely related to the business cycle phenomenon. The paper argues that this special framing implies not only some arbitrary hypotheses which are difficult to accept in an evolutionary interpretation, but also some limitations in his understanding of (what he refused to call) economic evolution, particularly with respect to its driving forces.     

The Poet's Pose

Abstract

In July of 1868, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was on his fourth and final tour of Europe. He had become a literary lion in the grand tradition of the 19th century and enjoyed the kind of reverential celebrity that is now nearly out of style. It was obligatory that he visit with Dickens and Tennyson, and he duly did so. On the 17th or 18th of July 1868, during one of his several visits to Tennyson's house at Farringford on the Isle of Wight, he was taken by Tennyson to be photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron. Tennyson, along with others among his contemporaries, was aware that the strange woman who took such pains with her photographs and who tyrannized her sitters might be something of a genius. Longfellow was probably just mystified. In a famous quotation, Tennyson abandoned Longfellow to her tender mercies: ‘I will leave you now, Longfellow. You will have to do whatever she tells you. I will come back soon and see what is left of you’¹. Of what was left we cannot be sure, but the photograph that was taken was of an angry old man, with a head resembling the crest of a stormy wave; emotional, strong, raw, and indisputably great. A later critic speculated on a century that could allow men to grow into that special mould of greatness so evident in their very look, and we may also speculate on how they found the photographers who could mirror them so well.