Welcome to the weblog of Net Advance Retro.
New essays will be added every other Monday, circumstances permitting.
The subject matter of the weblog will be varied, but will include the
following topics:
- physical science and technology in the Long Nineteenth Century
- interaction of science and technology with art and literature in the 1800s
- "lost" science, that is, branches of science popular in the 1800s but
subsequently ignored (with good reason or otherwise)
- Victorian roots of contemporary thinking in physics
- contemporary movements (e.g. "steampunk") that seek to
revive selected aspects of Nineteenth Century technological culture
Bizarre opinions, factual errors, and mythologising tendencies found
in this weblog are attributable solely to the author (Norman Hugh Redington),
and should not be associated with the Net Advance of Physics
as a whole. Caveat lector.
Reverse-Chronological List of Weblog Entries: Note that entries
can also be found by subject on the main index to Net Advance Retro.
- 2017 Sept. 18: Added to the
Science Poetry Page verse by
T. Däubler,
H. Kaufman,
A. Lowell,
A. Noyes,
J. Very,
and
W. Wordsworth.
- 2017 July 16: Added to the
Science Poetry Page verse by
W. E. Channing,
A. H. Clough,
S. T. Coleridge,
G. Crabbe,
R. W. Dixon,
E. Gosse,
T. Hardy,
L. Hunt,
H. Melville,
P. B. Shelley,
H. Smith,
J. Smith,
and
J. B. Tabb
- 2017 May 22: Added to the
Science Poetry Page verse by
R. Brooke,
R. Browning,
V. P. Bryan,
G. Clarke,
A. Dobson,
F. Fisher,
and
E. Leslie
- 2017 Mar. 6:
Changes to the
Science Poetry Page:
New pages for poems about
biology, chemistry,
evolution, and
geology. Also new
verse by:
Geo. Ade,
T. Campbell,
G. K. Chesterton,
W. H. Davies,
R. W. Gilder,
P. H. Hayne,
W. D. Howells,
A. Pike,
C. G. D. Roberts,
J. Ruskin,
M. Tighe,
E. M. Watson,
and
Wm. Watson
- 2017 Feb. 7: Added to the
Science Poetry Page verse by
K. D. Balmont,
J. M. Bell,
G. W. Bungay,
C. W. E. Chapin, Jr.,
Lord De Tabley,
R. W. Emerson,
C. K. Field,
M. E. Leverett,
R. F. Murray,
R. Rice,
J. W. Riley,
M. F. Robinson,
L. H. Sigourney,
E. R. Sill,
A. Stansfield,
E. C. Stedman,
B. F. Taylor,
M. Tupper,
and
Anonymous.
- 2016 Dec. 19: Added to the
Science Poetry Page verse by
G. Boker,
C. B. Burgess,
E. Dowden,
G. Eliot,
W. H. Ireland,
E. Markham,
H. Melville,
S. W. Mitchell,
R. Noel,
W. G. Palgrave,
S. Phillips,
and
J. B. Tabb.
- 2016 Nov. 28: Added to the
Science Poetry Page verse by
H. Abbey,
W. Allingham,
E. Arnold,
R. Atwell,
L. G. Clark,
J. Hogg,
L. Mifflin,
M. Nicholson,
A. Seward,
L. Smith,
and
J. K. Stephen.
- 2016 Nov. 7: Added to the
Science Poetry Page verse by
E. Darwin,
R. Dawes,
A. Duganne,
E. Elliott,
F. R. Havergal,
R. S. Hawker,
L. Johnson,
H. Monro,
R. W. Service,
F. Thompson,
J. B. Webber,
and
A. Webster.
Also, updated the William Rowan Hamilton
page.
- 2016 Sept. 26: Added to the
Science Poetry Page verse by
H. D. Thoreau,
T. Tilton,
H. Timrod,
and
J. Very.
- 2016 Sept. 5: Added to the
Science Poetry Page verse by
P. J. Bailey,
W. Barnes,
T. L. Beddoes,
W. L. Bowles,
O. T. Dargan,
G. Frankau,
E. A. Robinson,
C. Smith,
and
W. Whitsett
- 2016 August 8: Added to the
Science Poetry Page verse by
A. E. Housman,
J. Keiley,
A. Lowell,
E. Wheeler Wilcox,
H. K. White,
N. P. Willis,
and
C. E. S. Wood
- 2016 July 25: Added to the
Science Poetry Page verse by
R. Kipling,
H. W. Longfellow,
J. Masefield,
J. Stephens,
R. L. Stevenson,
and
Bayard Taylor
- 2016 June 20: Added to the
Science Poetry Page verse by
J. W. Foley,
Bret Harte,
Walter Chalmers Smith,
and
Burton Stephens.
- 2016 May 09: Added to the
Science Poetry Page verse by
Hilaire Belloc,
Percy MacKaye,
and
Carl Sandburg.
- 2016 Apr. 18:
Einstein on Discovery:
Alexander Moszkowski's Einstein the Searcher,
Chapter Five [1921].
- 2016 Apr. 04: Added to the
Science Poetry Page verse by
Matthew Arnold,
William Herbert Carruth,
Babette Deutsch,
Edgar Lee Masters,
George Meredith,
Sir Ronald Ross,
George Santayana,
Horace Smith,
and
Bert Leston Taylor.
- 2016 Mar. 14:
Hermogenes and Hermione:
Sir John Herschel's
Dialogue on Atoms, [1860].
- 2016 Feb. 29:
Electrifying:
Hyland C. Kirk's
Is the Human Body a Storage Battery?, [1889].
- 2016 Feb. 15: Added to the
Science Poetry Page verse by
Anna Lætitia Barbauld,
L. Binyon,
E. H. Dewart,
Emily Dickinson,
Einar Ben,
W. E. Henley,
Jay Herman,
Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Kitahara,
Miyazawa Kenji,
B. F. Taylor,
Carlos Wilcox,
W. B. Yeats,
and
Anonymous
- 2016 Feb. 01:
Zerah Colburn, Calculating Prodigy:
Part Two, Chapter Three:
His Residence in England, [1833].
- 2016 Jan. 18:
Poetry Page Updated
with verse by American poets Edwin Emerson, Sr., Philip
Freneau, and Arthur Guiterman.
- 2016 Jan. 04:
A Day with Thomas A. Edison:
A J. R. Bray Studios silent documentary, [1922].
- 2015 Dec. 21:
Morphogenesis:
Stéphane Leduc's
Osmotic Growth, [1911].
- 2015 Nov. 30:
Kekulé's Dreams:
Walter Libby's
The Scientific Imagination, [1922].
- 2015 Nov. 09:
Lord Kelvin's Theory of Everything:
Steps Towards a Kinetic Theory of Matter, [1884].
- 2015 Oct. 26:
Author Index added to Poetry Page.
- 2015 Oct. 12:
In Memoriam Jim Harter (1941-2015):
Retrofuturistic artist and a major influence on this website.
- 2015 Sept. 29:
Subject Index added to Poetry Page.
- 2015 Aug. 31:
Zerah Colburn, Calculating Prodigy:
Part Two, Chapter Two:
His Travels in America, [1833].
- 2015 Aug. 10:
Carpenter--Tolstoy--Poincaré (Part Four):
Henri Poincaré's
Choice of Facts, [1909]
- 2015 Aug. 03:
Carpenter--Tolstoy--Poincaré (Part Three):
Leo Tolstoy's
Modern Science, [1898]
- 2015 July 27:
Carpenter--Tolstoy--Poincaré (Part Two):
Edward Carpenter's
Modern Science: A Criticism, Part B [1888]
- 2015 July 13:
Carpenter--Tolstoy--Poincaré (Part One):
Edward Carpenter's
Modern Science: A Criticism, Part A [1888]
- 2015 July 06:
Carpenter--Tolstoy--Poincaré (Introduction):
A Late 19th Century debate on the value of science (in five parts)
- 2015 June 22:
One o' Them Incorrigibles:
Judge Magazine Jokes Nervously About Flight [1911].
- 2015 June 08:
Barlow's Wheel:
A classic homopolar motor [1824].
- 2015 May 25:
Vive La France:
The first voyage of a pioneer airship [1884].
- 2015 Apr. 27:
Poetry Page Updated
with several poets from Cambridge, including
James Clerk Maxwell.
- 2015 Apr. 13:
The Mouse of Illustration:
A. J. Swinburne's Picture Logic [1875]
- 2015 Mar. 30:
A Collection of Mathematics and Physical Science Problem-Sets
from the Long Nineteenth Century.
- 2015 Mar. 16:
Spiritual Dynamics:
A Mathematical View of the Free Will Question,
by J. E. Oliver [1892].
- 2015 Mar. 02:
To the Fiery Exosphere:
A New and Curious Theory of Heat, by Benjamin Franklin [1788].
- 2015 Feb. 16:
Some Small Part in This Renaissance:
Robert Robinson Taylor, MIT's First Black Graduate
- 2015 Feb. 02:
Zerah Colburn, Calculating Prodigy:
Part Two, Chapter One:
First Discovery of His Remarkable Powers [1833].
- 2015 Jan. 19:
Filming the Great War in Advance:
Walter R. Booth's The Airship Destroyer, (1909).
- 2015 Jan. 05:
Happy New Year!
Greetings from the Herschels, January 1840.
- 2014 Dec. 22: No blog until Jan. 5; switching to fortnightly schedule
thereafter.
- 2014 Dec. 15:
The One of Time, of Space the Three:
The Collected Poems of Sir William Rowan Hamilton
- 2014 Dec. 08: No blog this week.
- 2014 Dec. 01: No blog this week.
- 2014 Nov. 24:
Bio-Inspired Design (Victorian Style):
Rev. Wood's Human Invention Anticipated by Nature [1877]
- 2014 Nov. 17:
The Autobiography of Charles Babbage -- Difference Engine No. 1
(Part One):
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, Chapter Five [1864]
- 2014 Nov. 10:
Boring Algebra Problems:
W. W. Rankin reads The Greek Anthology, 1921
- 2014 Oct. 27: No blog until November 10 -- writing a research proposal.
- 2014 Oct. 20:
A Planet, A World, A Satellite:
On the Moon with James Nasmyth, 1874
- 2014 Oct. 13: No blog this week.
- 2014 Oct. 06:
Universal Access:
The birth of Interlibrary Loan, 1884
- 2014 Sept. 29:
POETRY PAGE UPDATED:
Approximately 100 new entries and/or notes.
- 2014 Sept. 22:
BOOK REVIEW:
John van Wyhe's Charles Darwin in Cambridge [2014].
- 2014 Sept. 15:
Murmurings During the Jubilee:
Norman Lockyer's "Science and Education During Victoria's Reign" [1887].
- 2014 Sept. 08:
"Our Ancestors on the Goose Question"
[1872].
- 2014 Sept. 01: No blog this week.
- 2014 Aug. 25:
"The March of Science"
[1846].
- 2014 Aug. 18:
Zerah Colburn, Calculating Prodigy:
Part Two, Preface [1833].
- 2014 Aug. 11:
The Autobiography of Charles Babbage -- Cambridge:
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher,
Chapter Four [1864].
- 2014 Aug. 04:
Ernst Florens Friedrich ... :
Wheatstone's synopsis of Chladni's sand-figure work
[1833].
- 2014 July 28: No blog this week.
- 2014 July 21:
Tom 'n' Jim 'n' Huck 'n' the Philosophy of Science:
From Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain
[1893].
- 2014 July 14:
Zerah Colburn, Calculating Prodigy:
Part One, Chapter Three --
"Vindication"
[1813].
- 2014 July 07:
The Autobiography of Charles Babbage -- Boyhood:
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher,
Chapter Three [1864].
- 2014 June 23: Two-week summer hiatus.
- 2014 June 16:
Mars, by the Latest Observations
by Camille Flammarion
[1872].
- 2014 June 09:
Zerah Colburn, Calculating Prodigy:
Part One, Chapter Two --
"A Very Clever Boy, But No Prodigy"
[1813].
- 2014 June 02:
The Autobiography of Charles Babbage -- Childhood:
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher,
Chapter Two [1864].
- 2014 May 26:
Einstein on Education:
Alexander Moszkowski's Einstein the Searcher,
Chapter Four [1921].
- 2014 May 19:
Singing in Chladni's Garden, Part 3:
Two Forerunners -- Leonardo vs. Galileo
- 2014 May 12:
The Constitution of Nebulæ
by Heinrich Schellen [1870].
- 2014 May 05:
Zerah Colburn, Calculating Prodigy:
Part One, Chapter One --
Some Account of ZERAH COLBURN, an American Child,
[1813].
- 2014 Apr. 28:
The Autobiography of Charles Babbage -- My Ancestors:
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher,
Chapter One [1864].
- 2014 Apr. 21: Easter holiday -- no blog entry.
- 2014 Apr. 14:
Valhalla:
Alexander Moszkowski's Einstein the Searcher,
Chapter Three [1921].
- 2014 Apr. 07:
Singing in Chladni's Garden, Part 2:
Sophie Herrick's Visible Sound
[1891].
- 2014 Mar. 31:
Zerah Colburn, Calculating Prodigy:
A Memoir, Written by Himself,
Table of Contents [1833].
- 2014 Mar. 24:
The Autobiography of Charles Babbage:
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher,
Preface and Table of Contents [1864].
- 2014 Mar. 17:
Beyond Our Power:
Alexander Moszkowski's Einstein the Searcher,
Chapter Two [1921].
- 2014 Mar. 10:
Singing in Chladni's Garden, Part 1:
Margaret Watts Hughes's Voice-Figures
[1891].
- 2014 Mar. 03:
We Need Never Know Anything About the Actual World:
Bertrand Russell's Philosophical Importance of Mathematical Logic
[1913].
- 2014 Feb. 24:
Abraham Lincoln -- Information Theorist and Old Fogy:
Lincoln's Lectures on Discoveries and Inventions
[1860].
- 2014 Feb. 17:
Phenomena of the Heavens:
Alexander Moszkowski's Einstein the Searcher,
Chapter One [1921].
- 2014 Feb. 10:
I Did Not Think, I Investigated:
W. C. Röntgen's On a New Kind of Rays [1895].
- 2014 Feb. 03: No blog this week.
- 2014 Jan. 27:
Living Online in the Nineteenth Century:
Drawings from The Operator [1877].
- 2014 Jan. 20:
Conversations with Einstein: Preface and Translator's Note:
Alexander Moszkowski's Einstein the Searcher [1921].
- 2014 Jan. 13:
Conversations with Einstein:
Alexander Moszkowski's Einstein the Searcher [1921].
- 2014 Jan. 06:
Little Sinners:
Charles R. Gibson's Autobiography of an Electron [1911].
- 2013 Dec. 30: One-week hiatus for New Year's holiday.
- 2013 Dec. 23:
Season's Greetings!:
Henry Dudeney's Christmas Puzzle Party.
- 2013 Dec. 16:
Cryophorus:
William Wollaston's Freezing at a Distance.
- 2013 Dec. 09:
In Memory of the Late Richard R. Nagy:
Retrofuturist consumer-electronics designer.
- 2013 Dec. 02:
Waves on Monday, Corpuscles on Tuesday:
Sir William Henry Bragg's Electrons and Ether Waves
- 2013 Nov. 25:
The Face of American Science, 1885:
Raphael Pumpelly's Composite Portraits
- 2013 Nov. 18:
1894 -- A Millionaire's Space Odyssey:
John Jacob Astor's A Journey in Other Worlds
- 2013 Nov. 11:
The Relativity of Size:
Richard Tolman's Principle of Similitude
(a bit more technical than usual for this blog)
- 2013 Nov. 04:
As Destructive as Possible:
Hiram Maxim and others on "Progress in Methods
of Naval Warfare" (1911).
- 2013 Oct. 28:
The Air-Midshipman's Primer-Song (2nd Draught):
History and theory of lighter-than-air craft, in verse.
Numerous hyperlinks added, approximately one per stanza.
- 2013 Oct. 21:
The Thermometer Freezes:
The Discovery of Solid Mercury
- 2013 Oct. 14:
Poetry and Mathematical Physics in the Long Nineteenth Century
- 2013 Oct. 07:
Enquiry-Based Learning, 1920s Style:
C. G. MacArthur's Scientific Teaching of Science.
- 2013 Sept. 30:
Unlettered, Unschooled, or Wild:
Ernst Mach's Inventors I Have Met.
- 2013 Sept. 23:
Were the Plan of the Universe Unrolled like a Map at Our Feet ... :
J. J. Sylvester on the beauty of mathematics.
- 2013 Sept. 16:
We Go Home by the Water, Says Bryan O'Lynn:
A call to industrialise Ireland, 1833.
- 2013 Sept. 09:
No Moving Parts: Irving Langmuir's Structure of the Static Atom
- 2013 Sept. 02: One-week hiatus to update some neglected
parts of the site.
- 2013 Aug. 26:
The Air-Midshipman's Primer-Song (1st Draught):
History and theory of lighter-than-air craft, in verse.
- 2013 Aug. 19:
The Newlin Diagram
- 2013 Aug. 12: The 19th Century War between Physics and
Biology, Part 5: The Mathematics of Plants
- 2013 Aug. 05:
Mrs. Somerville and (a Few of) Her Friends
- 2013 July 29:
Timeturner: A. P. Trotter's Poem "Time Turned Back"
- 2013 July 22:
"Like Pollen from a Pine": Svante Arrhenius's Transmission of Life Through the Universe
- 2013 July 15:
Ubi Crookes, Ibi Lux
- 2013 July 08:
Mind the Gap
- 2013 July 01:
"The Stately Giraffe Would Not Be Visible" -- Cold Dark-Matter, 1894
- 2013 June 24:
Irrlicht
- 2013 June 17:
Ringworld
- 2013 June 03:
Henri Poincaré's The Relativity of Space:
An Illustrated, Annotated Edition
In six parts.
- 2013 May 27:
Through the Then-Unpaved Stars, the Turnpike Road
(epilogue to A New Approach to Experimental History of Science)
- 2013 Apr. 08:
A New Approach to Experimental History of Science
In seven parts, plus an epilogue, released over two months.
- 2013 Apr. 01:
News from the Centre of the Universe
- 2013 Mar. 11: Hermann Minkowski's Space
and Time: An Illustrated, Annotated Edition In twelve
parts.
- 2013 Mar. 04: Out of a Blizzard, "Dainty Hieroglyphics"
- 2013 Feb. 18: The Sky Falls on Benares
- 2013 Feb. 11: The 19th Century War between Physics and Biology, Part 4:
Poetics -- It is Reasonable -- Someone Speaks
- 2013 Feb. 04:
Scenes from the Life of Miss Sydney Margaret Hamilton
- 2013 Jan. 28: Dimitry Mendeléeff and the Elements Lighter Than Hydrogen
- 2013 Jan. 21: No Wonnumetonomy: The Struggles of
a Self-Made Scientist
- 2013 Jan. 14: The Rise and Fall of 19th Century Geometric Algebra, Part 1: Argand's Plane
- 2013 Jan. 07: A New Name for Pechblende
- 2012 Dec. 31:
Mr. Haskins of Buffalo Denies that there is an Æther
- 2012 Dec. 24: In Which Charles Babbage Says "Bah, Humbug."
- 2012 Dec. 17: Strange Doings in the Sky, 1864
- 2012 Dec. 10: In Which Wm. Wordsworth
Quarrels with His Airship
- 2012 Dec. 03: Greetings from 1827!
- 2012 Nov. 26: The 19th Century War between Physics and Biology, Part 3: Go It, Charlie!
- 2012 Nov. 19: Pritchett the Progressive
- 2012 Nov. 12: Fossils from Space!
- 2012 Nov. 05: Solar Energy: Plus ça change ...
- 2012 Oct. 29: The 19th Century War between Physics and Biology, Part 2: Cambridge as Jerusalem
- 2012 Oct. 22: The 19th Century War between Physics and Biology, Part 1: The Background
- 2012 Oct. 15: Introductory Message