Ramblings and webcomics from LeEMS
The first in the Witchy Art Challenge.
Its about darn time I do a draw challenge again. I found this one a while ago and saved it for myself. I may not be on Tumblr any more, but I’ll tag as instructed so y’all can find them easily.
Allow me to take you on a brief tour of highlighting the history of food caused disasters.
by Ben Johnson
Johnson article on Historic UK recounts the tidal wave of beer that flooded the streets in St. Giles, London and killed at least 8 people.
Did you know that dust can explode, and the dust can be made of anything: wood pulp, cotton, flour, cornstarch, or sugar. Yes, sugar can explode. In 2008 a sugar refinery explosion in Georgia killed 14 and injured 40.
BBC News reports in 2013 27 tonnes of caramelized goat cheese caught fire as it was being driven through a tunnel in northern Norway. The fire remained blazing for five days and released toxic gas that slowed down the recovery operation.
by Iric Nathanson
Nathanson describes how on the evening of 1878 the Washburn A Mill exploded in a series of thunderous explosions. All fourteen workers on duty for the night shift were killed by rapidly burning flour dust.
In 1972 a the upper holds of a Swiss Freighter carrying tapioca mix caught fire. The crew tried to keep the fire under control until they could dock by wetting down the wood for 25 days. The combination of heat and water swelled and cooked the tapioca until it weighed down the ship.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/WUJDMJFS4BEYNS6RFWSHCXUCJE.jpg)
by Dean Ruxton
Ruxton, on the Irish Times, recounts the story where a fire spreading through the city of Dublin burst the wooden casks holding whiskey until they burst open and sent the burning liquid down the streets.
A slide show on The Wichita Eagle shows the aftermath of the explosion of the DeBruce Grain elevator in 1998 killing two men and injuring six others.
By Alison Gowans
Gowans, on the Gazette, recounts how more than 100 years ago an explosion at the a cornstarch factory blew out windows throughout town, killed 43 workers, and collapsed the factory.
We haven’t been completely lucky finding acceptable movies that took place on Mother’s Day, so this is another holiday where a thematic selection of movies will come to the rescue. There is a glut of mother themed movies to choose from, and so this year we might:
I may have mentioned before how our lives revolve around the academic year, so the end of schools is essentially our beginning of summer, even though it happens in May for us. Early May. In Florida, though, summer may have well been in place for months already, weather wise.
While I was being distracted by the little known 1909 precursor to solar panels when helping researchers, I noticed something else in Popular Electricity in Plain English that astonished me. One of the authors who had written about Cove’s sun harnessing experiments, Victor Laughter, had also been written about for his own experiments in wirelessly transmitting photographs in 1910! A quick search online for Victor Laughter provided none of the usual answers, no Wikipedia entry, no casual mention to his inventions. So, of course, I had to find out more.
Victor Laughter was born in Mississippi in 1988 and by twelve was likely orphaned living in the Waverly Institute, along with his sister Belva (Bensman, n.d.). Also around the age of 12, Laughter built his first experimental wireless set (Bensman, n.d.). Belva would marry and move to Memphis, making Memphis the home to which Victor would often return before residing their permanently. He would perfect and advertise his wireless telegraphy set when he was twenty (‘Inventor Tells About First Set,’ 1931), quickly following this with the publication of his book the Operator’s Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Handbook published by Drake and Company in 1909. It was the most complete guide to wireless at the time, now believed to be the first book on radio (‘Victor Laughter, Radio Pioneer, Dies,’ 1966), and would sell over 30,000 copies over two printings (Bensman, n.d.).
Before getting too much further, it will be useful to understand the state of radio at the turn of the 20th century. Prior to 1920, radio, known as wireless, was extremely experimental. Most wireless telegraphy, later radiotelegraphy, prior to WWI was morse code that would turn the transmitter on and off producing the dot and dash pulses of radio waves. The waves being sent and received could not carry a voice until Reginald Fessenden invented the heterodyne receiver in 1901 (Wireless Telegraphy, 2023). Wireless telegraphy became an exciting new hobby and challenge for anyone with the time and access to equipment needed (Halper, 1999). These hobbyists made important discoveries and advancements that would cement radio’s importance in the upcoming war and as a commercially lucrative opportunity thereafter.
In 1910 Victor Laughter would take on the position of editor for Hugo Gernsback’s Modern Electrics magazine, all the while publishing consistently in Popular Electricity in Plain English and serving as Technical Director and Secretary for the American Wireless Institute of Detroit (Bensman, n.d.; Massie & Perry, 2002). His wireless transmission of photographs was highlighted in the Popular Electricity in Plain English 1910 article: “Transmission of Photographs by Wireless.” This invention, which would be an early example of a facsimile transmission, isn’t mentioned much elsewhere and may have been an experiment that was left by the wayside similar to those described by McCormack (1913):
“In later years other experimenters tried to develop improved high-frequency spark transmitters–Victor Laughter himself wrote an article about William Dubilier’s efforts along these lines in the June, 1911 Modern Electrics. (A second article on Dubilier appeared in the January, 1912 issue–this time followed two months later by a letter from Laughter, complaining that Dubilier was now claiming credit for a transmitter design actually developed by Laughter). And in spite of the optimism Laughter expressed in this article about the future of his system, no high-frequency spark system for audio transmissions was ever developed to the point that it was successfully put into commercial service.”
McCormack, Edward J. (1913). A Voice From The Air. Technical World Magazine. 84-85. The Voice From the Air (1913) (earlyradiohistory.us)
Victor Laughter would also transfer or sell most of his invention patents to various companies and organizations (‘Inventor Tells About First Set,’ 1931). His first three patents, prior to 1911, were sold to Dr. Lee DeForest of the North American Wireless Corporation which would soon after go bankrupt, transferring all assets to the Radio Corporation of America (Bensman, n.d.). So the further development of many of his ideas would end up in the hands of others. He seemed most committed to developing and improving wireless broadcasting. In 1913 he had arranged to set up his equipment on the roof of the Tri-States station in the Falls Building in Memphis. Laughter called the press to his experiment testing the area limits of a broadcast and had more reporters and his brother in law waiting at a house two miles away (McCormack, 1913; Bensman, n.d.; ‘Victor Laughter, Radio Pioneer, Dies,’ 1966). Victor Laughter would also be credited with one of the first broadcasts of a live performance by W.C. Handy, the Father of the Blues, in 1914 (Halper, 1999).
“Our research during the war aided materially in the commercial development of the industry. The Superheterodyne was the work of our development”
Victor Laughter (‘Inventor Tells About First Set,’ 1931)
In 1917 Victor Laughter was mustered into the army, where he would work in the U.S. Signal Corp. as a First Lieutenant and keep radio communication the the front lines in operation until 1919 (‘Inventor Tells About First Set,’ 1931; Bensman, n.d.). After the war he worked in St. Louis and Memphis doing a variety of jobs, dealing radio parts, and helping the design of Clarence Saunders’ first automated grocery (‘Inventor Tells About First Set,’ 1931; Bensman, n.d.). He continued to patent inventions which he invariably assigned to other parties. By 1931 he had 18 patents, and by his death in 1966 he had 25. He also continued to work with Hugo Gernsback’s and to contribute articles to Radio Electronics magazine, the successor to Modern Electronics (‘Victor Laughter, Radio Pioneer, Dies,’ 1966; Bensman, n.d.).
Volumes of Popular Electricity in Plain English can be found in the Smithsonian Libraries and on the Internet Archive .
For Earth Day, April 22nd, we have a mostly thematic list. I’ve already talked about Aerial America, and it is a great way to be awed by the earth, and disturbed sometimes about what we are doing to it. If you are into apocalyptic futures then Water World (1995) and Mad Max (1979) might offer the right kind of vibe.
So far we have found one movie that specifically calls out Earth Day, and, yes, we will be watching it:
I recently opened up my genealogy records and snooped around the information that my mother and I had gathered more than a decade ago. And, I started looking around on the web for additional information and media to pad out our combined records. Just the other day Evergreen podcasts recently re-posted an interview that Col. Logan Weston gave on Warriors in Their Own Words. Col. Logan Weston is my great-uncle, served in the special ops force Merrill’s Marauders during WWII, and wrote about his experiences in his book The Fightin’ Preacher. I am terribly proud of my grandmother’s brother and enjoy hearing stories about him and his service to our country. I hope y’all will enjoy the listen as well.
There are plenty of thematically appropriate and dramatic representations of Passover in the movies. We will be taking a slightly sleepier and round about approach with Phenomena (1985) because sometimes we just need a comforting and familiar horror movie. What? Didn’t know that a European horror movie set in a girls school had anything to do with Passover? It’s easy to miss.
We may also track down “A Rugrats Passover” (1995). I am a sucker for cartoon holiday specials.
I might be running out of room in the modest space I have allotted myself for my vintage recipe pamphlets. I find it fascinating how the culmination of industrialization, new kitchen appliances, changing class structure, war, depression, and post war boom meant that EVERYONE – including electric companies, food suppliers, government agencies, and more – wanted to teach us how to cook at the end of the 19th century through and past the 1960s. Well, online collections of recipe pamphlets don’t take up space. Here are some:
My work sends me looking for all kinds of things that I would never, if entirely directing my own research, be compelled to search and learn. I am grateful for this. This is how I learned about George Cove and his solar electric generator…a little known 1909 precursor to solar panels. The Resilience article “How to Build a Low-Tech Solar Panel?” goes into detail on Cove’s work.
With the picture caption of the photograph from the Resilience article, I was able to find two articles about Cove’s work at the time:
I don’t know about you, but my professional life has been filled with discussions on AI generated text and art. The release of and growing proliferation of AI generated and assisted work has people asking many questions about originality, copyright, ethics, plagiarism, and more. I am discussing none of that here.
Instead, I decided to play with one of the AI art generators – an artificial intelligence program trained to create artwork based on a text prompt by synthesizing or learning from a collection of ‘training material’ gathered from various sources. Taking inspiration from one of my most popular posts to date, I wondered if Dall-E could give me a rendition of Spirited Horses that would’ve been compelling in similarity to Henri LeRoy’s had it been a contemporary of that work.
That most popular post is “Chromolithography and the Mystery of Henri and Anita LeRoy,” wherein I attempted to figure out the true authorship of a picture that I inherited from my grandmother, finding out all about chromolithography along the way. If you need a reminder, the first picture in the following gallery is what is often called ‘Spirited Horses’ with the signature of LeRoy. From what I was able to find out, the following two may have been issued as some kind of collect-all-three deal. The final picture is pretty darn similar in my opinion, issued by another chromolithographic company, Prang Co.
Well, I tried a couple prompts with Dall-E. The first try: “spirited horses in the style of a Victorian chromolithography,” said to me that the AI didn’t really know what I meant by chromolithographic style. Chromolithography was more a technique, but as a technique rooted very firmly to one main time period, I think they did have a look about them. A look that these four results did not capture.
I picked the last one, the one I thought most like my ‘Spirited horses’ and had the AI generate a few variations. The variations went to weird places.
For my next prompt I kept with the chromolithography word and tried: “chromolithography of horses running from a storm.” A couple of the examples here reminded me of the Prang, Co. image.
So I tried variations on the last one again.
Overall the experiment was interesting. I can see that the text prompt I give is of supreme importance. So, I tried ‘painting of two horses, one black and one white, with the black horse in the foreground, running from lightning.’ The results were different than the two previous tests but not any more ground breakingly similar to the chromolithographic prints I had studied previously.
Was I trying to get something that looked like an existing picture? Maybe. I’m not sure really. Knowing that the AI is trained on existing images from other artists has led many to worry that the images that result are copies, infringing on other artists rights. Of course each art AI I have played with is obviously trained on different images. If Henri LeRoy’s original Spirited Horses was in the training set, would I have gotten a more similar result from the AI? My playing around isn’t really meant to answer those questions. There are researchers trying to do this exactly: get a generated image that obviously infringes on one of its training images.
