Suggested Readings | AEON | LowTechMagazine | MIT Press Reader
To wrap up this month of March I recommend three articles for those inclined to enjoy long reads. Fascinating stories about history of Cherokee numerals, sewage-fed aquaculture, and a French revolutionary, Madame Roland. Happy Readings!
How America Has Always Advertised the Next Golden Age of Computers | Literary Hub
“Computer advertisements from the 1950s were divided between two dominant styles: The first was the so-called shirt sleeve style of ad—a holdover from the 1930s and 40s—which tended to include several paragraphs of sales copy, sometimes in the form of a testimonial from a scientist or CEO, alongside decorative headline text and various overlapping elements—the overall result of which was a busy design and a hard sell. The second …”
Air Conditioning Wasn’t Invented to Provide Comfort to Human Beings | IEEE Spectrum
“Air conditioning was devised not for comfort but for industry, specifically to control temperature and humidity in a color printing factory in Brooklyn. The process required feeding paper into the presses a number of times, once for each of the component colors, and the slightest misalignment caused by changes in humidity produced defective copies that had to be thrown away.”
Reginald Fessenden and the Invention of Sonar | Distillations | Science History Institute
“Uncharacteristically, Fessenden compromised. As his wife and biographer, Helen, would later explain, he couldn’t resist the challenge of outwitting “those soundless perils of rock and shoal, of iceberg and fog, dumb agencies of Nature to menace and destroy.” Also, he needed a job.”
Put A Propeller On It: the Golden Age of Tinkering | The Appendix
“Alberto Santos-Dumont is beloved in Brazil as the inventor of the airplane (his heart is even preserved in formaldehyde at Rio de Janeiro’s Air and Space Museum). But it was in Paris, the global capital of ballooning, that the debonair Brazilian made his name. In 1898 he decided that he was not satisfied with the haphazard nature of navigation in his balloon. So he put an engine and a propeller on it. Soon, he was the only man in the world flying a dirigible—even winning a prize for maneuvering around the Eiffel Tower.”
Taxidermy/Arstechnica
“That's not to say Director Erin Derham hasn't made an effective film—quite the opposite. She identified an ideal topic for this type of documentary and executed it to perfection. As someone who has never even held a gun, I found the whole thing engaging. Taxidermy turns out to boast a fascinating history, the current ways to make a living felt unexpected, and the personalities and visuals within Stuffed can be downright charming.”