An Online Gallery of Over 900,000 Wonderful Photos of Historic New York City

in History, Photography | March 27th, 2015

Grand Central

What is any major Amer­i­can city if not an indus­tri­al gallery bustling with peo­ple and machines? Some­times the images are bleak, as with the pho­to essays that often cir­cu­late of Detroit’s beau­ti­ful ruin; some­times they are defi­ant­ly hope­ful, as with those of the ris­ing of New Orleans; and some­times they are almost unfath­omably mon­u­men­tal, as with the images here of New York City, cir­ca the 20th century—or a great good bit of it, any­way.

Queensboro Bridge

You can sur­vey almost a hun­dred years of New York’s indomitable grandeur by perus­ing over 900,000 images from the New York City Munic­i­pal Archives Online Gallery.

Pho­tos like the aston­ish­ing tableaux in a sun­light-flood­ed Grand Cen­tral Ter­mi­nal at the top (tak­en some­time between 1935 and 41) and like the breath­tak­ing scale on dis­play in the 1910 expo­sure of the Queens­boro Bridge, above.

Bathers

The online gallery fea­tures large-for­mat pho­tos of the human, like the sea of bathers above; of the human-made, like the vault­ed, cav­ernous City Hall sub­way sta­tion below; and of the meld­ing of the two, like the painters pos­ing on the cables of the Brook­lyn Bridge, fur­ther down.

City Hall Station

These images come from a selec­tion of pho­tos culled from the var­i­ous gal­leries by The Atlantic. For more, see the NYC Munic­i­pal Archives site, which you can search by key­word or oth­er cri­te­ria. “Vis­i­tors,” writes the site, “are encour­aged to return fre­quent­ly as new con­tent will be added on a reg­u­lar basis. Patrons may order repro­duc­tions in the form of prints or dig­i­tal files.”

Brooklyn Bridge

Many of the images have water­marks on them to pre­vent ille­gal use. Nonethe­less the gallery is a jaw-drop­ping col­lec­tion of pho­tos you can eas­i­ly get lost in for hours, as well as an impor­tant resource for his­to­ri­ans and schol­ars of 20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can urban­ism. See The Atlantic’s selec­tion of images for even more daz­zling pho­tos. Or bet­ter yet, start rum­mag­ing through the New York City Munic­i­pal Archives Online Gallery right here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

Great New Archive Lets You Hear the Sounds of New York City Dur­ing the Roar­ing 20s

Vin­tage Video: A New York City Sub­way Train Trav­els From 14th St. to 42nd Street (1905)

Design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li Revis­its and Defends His Icon­ic 1972 New York City Sub­way Map

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The History & Legacy of Magna Carta Explained in Animated Videos by Monty Python’s Terry Jones

in History | March 24th, 2015

Even those who paid next to no atten­tion to their his­to­ry teach­ers know about Magna Car­ta — or at least they know it first came about in 1215. To deliv­er all the oth­er rel­e­vant details, we now have a new teacher in the form of Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones, who, on the occa­sion of this great char­ter’s 800th anniver­sary, pro­vides the nar­ra­tion for these two short ani­ma­tions, “Magna Car­ta: Medieval” and “Magna Car­ta: Lega­cy,” that tell the rest of its sto­ry.

These videos come as part of a whole web site put togeth­er by the British Library meant to help us all “dis­cov­er the his­to­ry and lega­cy of one of the world’s most cel­e­brat­ed doc­u­ments.” To this end, they’ve put up an intro­duc­tion to Magna Car­ta by Claire Breay and Julian Har­ri­son, which sum­ma­rizes both its ori­gins and its rel­e­vance today:

Orig­i­nal­ly issued by King John of Eng­land (r.1199–1216) as a prac­ti­cal solu­tion to the polit­i­cal cri­sis he faced in 1215, Magna Car­ta estab­lished for the first time the prin­ci­ple that every­body, includ­ing the king, was sub­ject to the law.

[ … ]

Three claus­es of the 1225 Magna Car­ta remain on the statute book today. Although most of the claus­es of Magna Car­ta have now been repealed, the many diver­gent uses that have been made of it since the Mid­dle Ages have shaped its mean­ing in the mod­ern era, and it has become a potent, inter­na­tion­al ral­ly­ing cry against the arbi­trary use of pow­er.

These ani­ma­tions, of course, add a great deal of visu­al, nar­ra­tive, and comedic vivid­ness to this impor­tant piece of West­ern polit­i­cal his­to­ry, fol­low­ing it from the reign of King John (“one of the worst kings in his­to­ry”), through civ­il war, the cre­ation of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, strug­gles for vot­ing rights and the free­dom of the press, right up to the writ­ing of the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights, in a sense Magna Car­ta’s mod­ern descen­dant. “Although very few of Magna Car­ta’s orig­i­nal claus­es remain valid in Eng­lish law,” says Jones, “it con­tin­ues to inspire peo­ple world­wide. Not a bad lega­cy for an 800-year-old doc­u­ment.”

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Online Gallery of 30,000 Items from The British Library, Includ­ing Leonar­do da Vinci’s Note­books And Mozart’s Diary

Down­load 78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

The British Library Puts Online 1,200 Lit­er­ary Trea­sures From Great Roman­tic & Vic­to­ri­an Writ­ers

Free Online Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Cours­es

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Rome Reborn: Take a Virtual Tour of Ancient Rome, Circa 320 C.E.

in History | March 20th, 2015

A few years ago, we fea­tured Rome Reborn, which is essen­tial­ly “a 3D dig­i­tal mod­el of the Eter­nal City at a time when Ancient Rome’s pop­u­la­tion had reached its peak (about one mil­lion) and the first Chris­t­ian church­es were being built.” Rome Reborn offers, declared Matthias Rasch­er, “a tru­ly stun­ning bird’s‑eye view of ancient Rome that makes you feel as if you were actu­al­ly there.” You may also remem­ber our posts on video analy­ses of great works of art by Khan Acad­e­my’s Smarthis­to­ry. Today, the two come togeth­er in the video above, “A Tour Through Ancient Rome in 320 C.E.”

In it, we not only see and move through ancient Rome recon­struct­ed, we have our extend­ed tour guid­ed by renowned “vir­tu­al archae­ol­o­gist” and over­seer of the Rome Reborn project Dr. Bernard Frisch­er, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia. He picks 320 C.E. as the year of the tour, “the peak of Rome’s devel­op­ment, cer­tain­ly in terms of pub­lic archi­tec­ture, for the sim­ple rea­son that the Emper­or at this time was Con­stan­tine the Great.” Short­ly after this year, Con­stan­tine would move the cap­i­tal from Rome to his city, Con­stan­tino­ple.

We hear Frisch­er in dia­logue with Dr. Steven Zuck­er, whose voice you may rec­og­nize from pre­vi­ous Smarthis­to­ry videos. Zuck­er’s ques­tions ensure that, while we take in the spec­ta­cle of Rome’s impres­sive archi­tec­ture (to say noth­ing of its equal­ly impres­sive aque­ducts) as it looked back in 320, we also think about what the real flesh-and-blood peo­ple who once lived there actu­al­ly did there: the jobs they did, the char­i­ot races they watched. “When I was study­ing ancient Rome,” admits Zuck­er, “one of the most dif­fi­cult things for me to under­stand was how all these ancient ruins fit togeth­er.” Now, with Frischer’s exper­tise, he and we can final­ly under­stand how the Forum, the Basil­i­ca, the Col­i­se­um, the Pan­theon and more all fit onto this ear­ly but still majes­tic urban fab­ric.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy

Rome Reborn – An Amaz­ing Dig­i­tal Mod­el of Ancient Rome

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

Vis­it Pom­peii (also Stone­henge & Ver­sailles) with Google Street View

Ani­ma­tion Gives You a Glimpse of What Life Was Like for Teenagers in Ancient Rome

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

Dis­cov­er 100 Great Works of Art with Videos Cre­at­ed by Khan Acad­e­my & Google Art Project

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic Drawings Show How He First Visualized the Ego, Superego, Id & More

in History, Psychology, Science | March 19th, 2015

Id Ego Superego

It’s easy to think we know all there is to know about Sig­mund Freud. His name, after all, has become an adjec­tive, a sure sign that someone’s lega­cy has embed­ded itself in the cul­tur­al con­scious­ness. But did you know that the Ger­man neu­rol­o­gist we cred­it with the inven­tion of psy­cho­analy­sis, the diag­noses of hys­te­ria, dream inter­pre­ta­tion, and the death dri­ve began his career patient­ly dis­sect­ing eels in search of… eel tes­ti­cles? Per­haps you did know that. Per­haps you only sus­pect­ed it. There are few things about Freud—who also pio­neered both the med­ical and recre­ation­al use of cocaine, joined the august British Roy­al Soci­ety, and unwit­ting­ly re-engi­neered phi­los­o­phy and lit­er­ary criticism—that sur­prise me any­more. Freud was a pecu­liar­ly tal­ent­ed indi­vid­ual.

Freud 2

One area in which he excelled may seem mod­est next to his ros­ter of pub­li­ca­tions and celebri­ty acquain­tances, and yet, the doctor’s skill as a med­ical draughts­man and mak­er of dia­grams to illus­trate his the­o­ries sure­ly deserves some appre­ci­a­tion. Freud’s draw­ing received a book length treat­ment in 2006’s From Neu­rol­o­gy to Psy­cho­analy­sis: Sig­mund Freud’s Neu­ro­log­i­cal Draw­ings and Dia­grams of the Mind by Lynn Gamwell and Mark Solms. These are but a small sam­pling of the many works of med­ical art found with­in its cov­ers, tak­en from a 2006 exhib­it at the New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine of the largest col­lec­tion of Freud’s draw­ings ever assem­bled, in com­mem­o­ra­tion of his 150th birth­day.

Freud 3

As the title of the book indi­cates, the draw­ings lit­er­al­ly illus­trate the rad­i­cal shift Freud made from the hard sci­ence of neu­rol­o­gy to a prac­tice of his own inven­tion. Cura­tor Gamwell writes, “as Freud focused on increas­ing­ly com­plex men­tal func­tions such as dis­or­ders of lan­guage and mem­o­ry, he put aside any attempt to dia­gram the under­ly­ing phys­i­o­log­i­cal struc­ture, such as neu­ro­log­i­cal path­ways, and he began mak­ing schemat­ic images of hypo­thet­i­cal psy­cho­log­i­cal struc­tures,” i.e. the Ego, Super­ego, and Id, as rep­re­sent­ed at the top in a 1933 dia­gram. Below it, from 1921, see “Group Psy­chol­o­gy and the Analy­sis of the Ego,” a schemat­ic that “attempts to rep­re­sent rela­tions between the major men­tal sys­tems (or agen­cies) in a group of human minds.” And just above, see Freud’s dia­gram for “The Psy­chi­cal Mech­a­nism of For­get­ful­ness” from 1898, depict­ing “asso­cia­tive links between var­i­ous con­scious, pre­con­scious and uncon­scious word pre­sen­ta­tions.”

Freud 4

It is in these late nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry dia­grams that we see Freud make the defin­i­tive move from empir­i­cal­ly observed illus­tra­tions of phys­i­cal structures—like the 1878 “Spinal Gan­glia and Spinal Chord of Petromy­zom” above—to rela­tions between ideas and “con­cep­tu­al enti­ties that have no tan­gi­ble exis­tence in the phys­i­cal world.” That shift, gen­er­al­ly marked by the pub­li­ca­tion of Stud­ies in Hys­te­ria in 1895, caused Freud some unease. “Look­ing back over his career 30 years lat­er,” writes Mark Solms, “ his long­ing for the com­fort­able respectabil­i­ty of his ear­li­er career is still evi­dent.” Even at the time, Freud would write in Stud­ies in Hys­te­ria that his case his­to­ries “lack the seri­ous stamp of sci­ence.” Though his stud­ies of eel, lam­prey, and human brains involved tan­gi­ble, observ­able phe­nom­e­na, he approached the new dis­ci­pline of psy­cho­analy­sis with no less rig­or, stat­ing only that the “the nature of the sub­ject” had changed, not his method.

Freud 5

The draw­ings, writes Bene­dict Carey in the New York Times, “tell a sto­ry in three acts, from biol­o­gy to psy­chol­o­gy, from the micro­scope to the couch.” As Freud makes the tran­si­tion, his metic­u­lous­ly detailed med­ical work, copied from glass slides, gives way to loose out­lines. One draw­ing of the brain’s audi­to­ry sys­tem from 1886 (above) “is as spare and geo­met­ric as a Calder sculp­ture.” Just a few years lat­er, Freud sketched out the dia­gram below in 1894, a schemat­ic, writes Solms, of “the rela­tion­ship between var­i­ous nor­mal and patho­log­i­cal mood states and sex­u­al phys­i­ol­o­gy.” It’s his first pure­ly psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic draw­ing, sketched in a let­ter to a col­league, Dr. Wil­helm Fleiss.

Freud 6

In the lat­er dia­grams, as we see above, his ten­ta­tive free­hand gave way to type­script and a tech­ni­cal draughtsman’s pre­ci­sion, with some draw­ings resem­bling, in Carey’s words, “the schemat­ic for an air-con­di­tion­ing sys­tem.” Freud seems to com­ment on the archi­tec­tur­al nature of these dia­grams when he writes in The Inter­pre­ta­tion of Dreams in 1900, “We are jus­ti­fied, in my view, in giv­ing free reign to our spec­u­la­tions so long as we retain the cool­ness of our judg­ment, and do not mis­take the scaf­fold­ing for the build­ing.” It’s a warn­ing many of Freud’s dis­ci­ples may not have heed­ed care­ful­ly enough.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Young Sig­mund Freud Researched & Got Addict­ed to Cocaine, the New “Mir­a­cle Drug,” in 1894

Sig­mund Freud Writes to Con­cerned Moth­er: “Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is Noth­ing to Be Ashamed Of” (1935)

Sig­mund Freud Appears in Rare, Sur­viv­ing Video & Audio Record­ed Dur­ing the 1930s

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Play Mark Twain’s “Memory-Builder,” His Game for Remembering Historical Facts & Dates

in History | March 19th, 2015

twain game

Mark Twain wrote The Adven­tures of Tom Sawyer, The Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn, and A Con­necti­cut Yan­kee in King Arthur’s Court, of course, but like any good lumi­nary of 19th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca, he also put togeth­er a few inven­tions on the side. These non-lit­er­ary achieve­ments of Twain’s includ­ed an “Improve­ment in Adjustable and Detach­able Straps for Gar­ments” (as the patent calls it) meant to replace sus­penders, a “self-past­ing” scrap­book”, and the “Mem­o­ry-Builder, a game for acquir­ing and retain­ing all sorts of facts and dates.”

“Twain believed that mem­o­riza­tion — a com­mon strat­e­gy of 19th-cen­tu­ry school­ing — was a wor­thy, if tire­some, pur­suit, and looked for ways to make it more inter­est­ing for annoyed stu­dents,” writes Slate’s Rebec­ca Onion. This line of think­ing led him to cre­ate the Mem­o­ry-Builder, which he described as a “game which shall fill the chil­dren’s heads with dates with­out study” in an 1883 let­ter to a friend. He explained the back­ground of his edu­ca­tion­al phi­los­o­phy in much fuller detail in a 1914 piece from Harper’s mag­a­zine:

Six­teen years ago when my chil­dren were lit­tle crea­tures the gov­erness was try­ing to ham­mer some primer his­to­ries into their heads. Part of this fun — if you like to call it that — con­sist­ed in the mem­o­riz­ing of the acces­sion dates of the thir­ty-sev­en per­son­ages who had ruled Eng­land from the Con­queror down. These lit­tle peo­ple found it a bit­ter, hard con­tract. It was all dates, they all looked alike, and they would­n’t stick. Day after day of the sum­mer vaca­tion drib­bled by, and still the kings held the fort; the chil­dren could­n’t con­quer any six of them.

This expe­ri­ence gave rise to a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent learn­ing meth­ods, of which the Mem­o­ry-Builder (patent­ed in 1885) would prove the best-known. Though Twain worked out a way to play it on a crib­bage board con­vert­ed into a his­tor­i­cal time­line, you can play a tech­no­log­i­cal­ly much-updat­ed but mate­ri­al­ly iden­ti­cal ver­sion of the game online (with the same crib­bage pins and the same strange­ly intense focus on those roy­als) at the web site of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon’s library. Alter­na­tive­ly, you can play an adap­ta­tion that deals with the life and times of Twain him­self at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­gini­a’s web site.

Whether or not the Mem­o­ry-Builder can help you learn your his­to­ry, you’ll have to find out for your­self. Not hav­ing caught on at the time, Twain’s game did­n’t get far out of the pro­to­type stage, but the idea behind it has sur­vived in the form of one of Twain’s many so-very-quotable quotes: “I have nev­er let my school­ing inter­fere with my edu­ca­tion.” Some­thing tells me he’d approve of see­ing his game on the inter­net, sure­ly the tool that has done more to get edu­ca­tion into the learn­er’s own hands than any­thing else in human his­to­ry so far. (Um, have you seen our list of 1100 Free Online Cours­es?)

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Pre­dicts the Inter­net in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Sto­ry, “From The ‘Lon­don Times’ in 1904”

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

Mark Twain Shirt­less in 1883 Pho­to

Mark Twain Cap­tured on Film by Thomas Edi­son in 1909. It’s the Only Known Footage of the Author.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Take the 146-Question Knowledge Test Thomas Edison Gave to Prospective Employees (1921)

in History, Science | March 16th, 2015

640px-Thomas_Edison2

I remem­ber open­ing my col­lege news­pa­per one day, and out of it fell what looked like an adver­tis­ing sup­ple­ment of unusu­al­ly util­i­tar­i­an design. Upon clos­er inspec­tion, it con­tained a series of math‑y look­ing prob­lems for the read­er to work out and, if they did so, mail in to an address pro­vid­ed. Word soon began to cir­cu­late that this unusu­al leaflet came from no less an insti­tu­tion than Google itself, already well known as a provider of advanced search ser­vices but not quite yet as a benev­o­lent provider of dream jobs (an image now sat­i­rized in movies like The Intern­ship).

The unusu­al hir­ing prac­tices of giant, inno­v­a­tive Amer­i­can tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies have become the stuff of mod­ern myth, but the usage of seem­ing­ly job-unre­lat­ed intel­lec­tu­al tests as a fil­ter for poten­tial employ­ees has a much longer his­to­ry. Thomas Edi­son, that orig­i­nal giant of Amer­i­can tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, put for­ward the first famous exam­ple: a 146-ques­tion test on sub­jects of gen­er­al knowl­edge from geog­ra­phy to his­to­ry to physics to the price of gold.

“Amer­i­cans obsessed over the test fol­low­ing [the] pub­li­ca­tion of many ques­tions in the May 11, 1921 New York Times,” writes Pale­o­fu­ture’s Matt Novak. “From there the test was debat­ed, copied, and par­o­died in news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines around the coun­try.” If you’d like to get a sense of how you’d have fared in the scram­ble for a sweet Edi­son job, set your mind back to the ear­ly 1920s and tack­le these ques­tions as best you can:

1. What coun­tries bound France?

2. What city and coun­try pro­duce the finest chi­na?

3. Where is the Riv­er Vol­ga?

4. What is the finest cot­ton grown?

5. What coun­try con­sumed the most tea before the war?

6. What city in the Unit­ed States leads in mak­ing laun­dry machines?

7. What city is the fur cen­tre of the Unit­ed States?

8. What coun­try is the great­est tex­tile pro­duc­er?

9. Is Aus­tralia greater than Green­land in area?

10. Where is Copen­hagen?

11. Where is Spitzber­gen?

12. In what coun­try oth­er than Aus­tralia are kan­ga­roos found?

13. What tele­scope is the largest in the world?

14. Who was Besse­mer and what did he do?

15. How many states in the Union?

16. Where do we get prunes from?

17. Who was Paul Revere?

18. Who was John Han­cock?

19. Who was Plutarch?

20. Who was Han­ni­bal?

21. Who was Dan­ton?

22. Who was Solon?

23. Who was Fran­cis Mar­i­on?

24. Who was Leonidas?

25. Where did we get Louisiana from?

26. Who was Pizarro?

27. Who was Boli­var?

28. What war mate­r­i­al did Chile export to the Allies dur­ing the war?

29. Where does most of the cof­fee come from?

30. Where is Korea?

31. Where is Manchuria?

32. Where was Napoleon born?

33. What is the high­est rise of tide on the North Amer­i­can Coast?

34. Who invent­ed log­a­rithms?

35. Who was the Emper­or of Mex­i­co when Cortez land­ed?

36. Where is the Impe­r­i­al Val­ley and what is it not­ed for?

37. What and where is the Sar­gas­so Sea?

38. What is the great­est known depth of the ocean?

39. What is the name of a large inland body of water that has no out­let?

40. What is the cap­i­tal of Penn­syl­va­nia?

41. What state is the largest? Next?

42. Rhode Island is the small­est state. What is the next and the next?

43. How far is it from New York to Buf­fa­lo?

44. How far is it from New York to San Fran­cis­co?

45. How far is it from New York to Liv­er­pool?

46. Of what state is Hele­na the cap­i­tal?

47. Of what state is Tal­la­has­see the cap­i­tal?

48. What state has the largest cop­per mines?

49. What state has the largest amethyst mines?

50. What is the name of a famous vio­lin mak­er?

51. Who invent­ed the mod­ern paper-mak­ing machine?

52. Who invent­ed the type­set­ting machine?

53. Who invent­ed print­ing?

54. How is leather tanned?

55. What is arti­fi­cial silk made from?

56. What is a cais­son?

57. What is shel­lac?

58. What is cel­lu­loid made from?

59. What caus­es the tides?

60. To what is the change of the sea­sons due?

61. What is coke?

62. From what part of the North Atlantic do we get cod­fish?

63. Who reached the South Pole?

64. What is a mon­soon?

65. Where is the Mag­dale­na Bay?

66. From where do we import figs?

67. From where do we get dates?

68. Where do we get our domes­tic sar­dines?

69. What is the longest rail­road in the world?

70. Where is Kenosha?

71. What is the speed of sound?

72. What is the speed of light?

73. Who was Cleopa­tra and how did she die?

74. Where are con­dors found?

75, Who dis­cov­ered the law of grav­i­ta­tion?

76. What is the dis­tance between the earth and sun?

77. Who invent­ed pho­tog­ra­phy?

78. What coun­try pro­duces the most wool?

79. What is felt?

80. What cere­al is used in all parts of the world?

81. What states pro­duce phos­phates?

82. Why is cast iron called pig iron?

83. Name three prin­ci­pal acids?

84. Name three pow­er­ful poi­sons.

85. Who dis­cov­ered radi­um?

86. Who dis­cov­ered the X‑ray?

87. Name three prin­ci­pal alka­lis.

88. What part of Ger­many do toys come from?

89. What States bound West Vir­ginia?

90. Where do we get peanuts from?

91. What is the cap­i­tal of Alaba­ma?

92. Who com­posed “Il Trova­tore”?

93. What is the weight of air in a room 20 by 30 by 10?

94. Where is plat­inum found?

95. With what met­al is plat­inum asso­ci­at­ed when found?

96. How is sul­phuric acid made?

97. Where do we get sul­phur from?

98. Who dis­cov­ered how to vul­can­ize rub­ber?

99. Where do we import rub­ber from?

100. What is vul­can­ite and how is it made?

101. Who invent­ed the cot­ton gin?

102. What is the price of 12 grains of gold?

103. What is the dif­fer­ence between anthracite and bitu­mi­nous coal?

104. Where do we get ben­zol from?

105. Of what is glass made?

106. How is win­dow glass made?

107. What is porce­lain?

108. What coun­try makes the best opti­cal lens­es and what city?

109. What kind of a machine is used to cut the facets of dia­monds?

110. What is a foot pound?

111. Where do we get borax from?

112. Where is the Assuan Dam?

113. What star is it that has been recent­ly mea­sured and found to be of enor­mous size?

114. What large riv­er in the Unit­ed States flows from south to north?

115. What are the Straits of Messi­na?

116. What is the high­est moun­tain in the world?

117. Where do we import cork from?

118. Where is the St. Gothard tun­nel?

119. What is the Taj Mahal?

120. Where is Labrador?

121. Who wrote “The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner”?

122. Who wrote “Home, Sweet Home”?

123. Who was Mar­tin Luther?

124. What is the chief acid in vine­gar?

125. Who wrote “Don Quixote”?

126. Who wrote “Les Mis­er­ables”?

127. What place is the great­est dis­tance below sea lev­el?

128. What are axe han­dles made of?

129. Who made “The Thinker”?

130. Why is a Fahren­heit ther­mome­ter called Fahren­heit?

131. Who owned and ran the New York Her­ald for a long time?

132. What is copra?

133. What insect car­ries malar­ia?

134. Who dis­cov­ered the Pacif­ic Ocean?

135. What coun­try has the largest out­put of nick­el in the world?

136. What ingre­di­ents are in the best white paint?

137. What is glu­cose and how made?

138. In what part of the world does it nev­er rain?

139. What was the approx­i­mate pop­u­la­tion of Eng­land, France, Ger­many and Rus­sia before the war?

140. Where is the city of Mec­ca?

141. Where do we get quick­sil­ver from?

142. Of what are vio­lin strings made?

143. What city on the Atlantic seaboard is the great­est pot­tery cen­tre?

144. Who is called the “father of rail­roads” in the Unit­ed States?

145. What is the heav­i­est kind of wood?

146. What is the light­est wood?

Some of these ques­tions, like those on the loca­tion of Copen­hagen or the iden­ti­ty of Leonidas (you need think back only to 300), have grown eas­i­er with time. Some — “What is coke?” “What is vul­can­ite and how is it made?” — have grown hard­er. Oth­ers will require you to call upon not cur­rent knowl­edge, but peri­od knowl­edge: sure, you know the num­ber of states in the union now, but how about in 1921? And sure, you know which city is the fur cen­ter of the Unit­ed States now, but how about in 1921?

Once you’ve made your guess­es, you can check your answers over at Pale­o­fu­ture. Edis­on’s test will almost cer­tain­ly frus­trate you — and if it does­n’t, you may have a career wait­ing not at Google, but on Jeop­ardy! — and it may even fill you with grat­i­tude that we live in an age where hot employ­ers check for raw brain­pow­er, not the abil­i­ty to mem­o­rize a seem­ing­ly ran­dom assort­ment of facts. But the test itself, like sev­er­al of its ques­tions, pulls a bit of a trick. The tremen­dous amount of atten­tion it received when the pub­lic caught a glimpse of it reveals Edis­on’s mas­tery of the high­est Amer­i­can force: pub­lic­i­ty.

Note: Thanks to one of our read­ers, you can see how Edi­son defend­ed the test in the pages of The New York Times.

via Pale­o­fu­ture

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Har­vard Stu­dents Fail the Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote in 1964

Thomas Edi­son & His Trusty Kine­to­scope Cre­ate the First Movie Filmed In The US (c. 1889)

Take The Near Impos­si­ble Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote (1964)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Albert Einstein Sports a Native American Headdress and a Peace Pipe at the Grand Canyon, 1931

in History, Physics | March 9th, 2015

einstein with the hopi
Click here to view the image in a larg­er for­mat.

In 1931, Cal­tech invit­ed Albert Ein­stein to spend some time on their cam­pus, with the hopes that he might even­tu­al­ly join their fac­ul­ty. While in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, he met Char­lie Chap­lin, took a pho­to with an Ein­stein pup­pet, enjoyed the mild win­ter, ruf­fled a few con­ser­v­a­tive feath­ers, then even­tu­al­ly left town. On the train ride back across the coun­try, he vis­it­ed the Hopi House, near the Grand Canyon, where he posed for a pic­ture with mem­bers of the Hopi tribe. The web­site Hanksville.org revis­its the clas­sic pho­to­graph (appar­ent­ly tak­en by Eugene O. Gold­beck) that doc­u­ment­ed his short vis­it:

There are sev­er­al strik­ing things about this pho­to­graph that deserve men­tion. It is clear that the head­dress that has been placed on Pro­fes­sor Ein­stein’s head and the pipe he has been giv­en to hold have no rela­tion­ship to the Indi­ans in this pho­to­graph. These Indi­ans are Hopis from the rel­a­tive­ly near­by Hopi pueb­los while the head­dress and pipe belong to the Plains Indi­an cul­ture.… The Hopis in this pic­ture were employ­ees of the Fred Har­vey Com­pa­ny who demon­strat­ed their arts there and, no doubt, posed for many oth­er pic­tures with tourists.

Besides Albert Ein­stein and his wife, there are 3 adult Hopis and one Hopi child in the pho­to­graph. Ein­stein is hold­ing the hand of a young Hopi girl in a very nat­ur­al man­ner; she is clutch­ing some­thing tight­ly in her oth­er hand and is quite intent upon some­thing out­side the frame. Prof. Ein­stein’s attrac­tion to chil­dren is seen in sev­er­al oth­er unof­fi­cial pho­tographs. He loved chil­dren and felt quite com­fort­able with them. The two men on the left side of the pho­to­graph were there to facil­i­tate the Ein­steins’ trip. The man on the left is J. B. Duffy, Gen­er­al Pas­sen­ger Agent of the ATSF (the famous Atich­son, Tokepa and San­ta Fe Rail­road); the oth­er man is Her­man Schweiz­er, Head of Fred Har­vey Curio, nor­mal­ly sta­tioned in Albu­querque. He may have spo­ken Ger­man and was there­fore present because Prof. Ein­stein was not com­plete­ly com­fort­able yet with Eng­lish.

Accord­ing to the Ein­stein Almanac, the Hopi “gave Ein­stein a peace pipe, rec­og­niz­ing his paci­fism, and dubbed him the ‘Great Rel­a­tive.’ ” You can see the pipe on dis­play in the pho­to.

As one web­site observed, what’s per­haps most notable about the his­toric image is this: It cap­tures lay­ers of commodification/fetishization. Here stands the most fetishized intel­lec­tu­al of the 20th cen­tu­ry pos­ing with one of the most fetishized peo­ples. Or maybe that’s just over­think­ing things.

Note: Some sources date the clas­sic pho­to back to 1922, but that seems less plau­si­ble. The Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter pro­vides an image avail­able for down­load here.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten as Albert Ein­stein Calls for Peace and Social Jus­tice in 1945

Albert Ein­stein Hold­ing an Albert Ein­stein Pup­pet (Cir­ca 1931)

“Do Sci­en­tists Pray?”: A Young Girl Asks Albert Ein­stein in 1936. Ein­stein Then Responds.

Ein­stein for the Mass­es: Yale Presents a Primer on the Great Physicist’s Think­ing

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Free Physics Cours­es in our Col­lec­tion of 1100 Free Online Cours­es

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Discover the Oldest Beer Recipe in History From Ancient Sumeria, 1800 B.C.

in Food & Drink, History | March 3rd, 2015

Ninkasi Tablets

Image cour­tesy of Lock, Stock, and His­to­ry

Beer, that favorite bev­er­age of foot­ball fans, frat boys, and oth­er macho stereotypes—at least accord­ing to the advertisers—actually has a very long, dis­tin­guished her­itage. It’s old­er, in fact, than wine, old­er than whiskey, old­er per­haps even than bread (or so some schol­ars have thought). As soon as humans set­tled down and learned to cul­ti­vate grains, some 13,000 years ago, the pos­si­bil­i­ty for fermentation—a nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring phenomenon—presented itself. But it isn’t until the 5th cen­tu­ry, B.C. that we have sources doc­u­ment­ing the delib­er­ate pro­duc­tion of ale in ancient Sume­ria. Nonethe­less, beer has been described as the “mid­wife of civ­i­liza­tion” due to its cen­tral role in agri­cul­ture, trade, urban­iza­tion, and med­i­cine.

Beer became so impor­tant to ancient Mesopotami­an cul­ture that the Sume­ri­ans cre­at­ed a god­dess of brew­ing and beer, Ninkasi, and one anony­mous poet, smit­ten with her pow­ers, penned a hymn to her in 1800 B.C.. A daugh­ter of the pow­er­ful cre­ator Enki and Nin­ti, “queen of the sacred lake,” Ninkasi is all the more poignant a deity giv­en the role of women in ancient cul­ture as respect­ed brew­ers. The “Hymn to Ninkasi,” which you can read below, not only pro­vides insight into the impor­tance of this cus­tom in Sumer­ian mythol­o­gy, but it also gives us a recipe for brew­ing ancient Sumer­ian beer—the old­est beer recipe we have.

Trans­lat­ed from two clay tablets by Miguel Civ­il, Pro­fes­sor of Sumerol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, the poem con­tains instruc­tions pre­cise enough that Fritz May­tag, founder of the Anchor Brew­ing Com­pa­ny in San Fran­cis­co, took it upon him­self to try them. He pre­sent­ed the results at the annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Micro Brew­ers in 1991. The brew­ers, writes Civ­il, “were able to taste ‘Ninkasi Beer,’ sip­ping it from large jugs with drink­ing straws as they did four mil­len­nia ago. The beer had an alco­hol con­cen­tra­tion of 3.5%, very sim­i­lar to mod­ern beers, and had a ‘dry taste lack­ing in bit­ter­ness,’ ‘sim­i­lar to hard apple cider.’” A chal­lenge to all you home brew­ers out there.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, May­tag was unable to bot­tle and retail the recre­ation, since ancient Mesopotami­an beer “was brewed for imme­di­ate con­sump­tion” and “did not keep very well.” But what Civ­il learned from the exper­i­ment was that his translation—in the hands of a mas­ter brew­er “who saw through the dif­fi­cult ter­mi­nol­o­gy and poet­ic metaphors”—produced results. Below, see the first part of the “Hymn to Ninkasi,” which describes “in poet­ic terms the step-by-step process of Sumer­ian beer brew­ing.” A sec­ond part of the hymn “cel­e­brates the con­tain­ers in which the beer is brewed and served” and “includes the toasts usu­al in tav­ern and drink­ing songs.” You can read that joy­ful text—which includes the line “With joy in the heat [and] a hap­py liver”—on page 4 of Pro­fes­sor Civil’s arti­cle on the Hymn.

 

Hymn to Ninkasi (Part I)
Borne of the flow­ing water,
Ten­der­ly cared for by the Nin­hur­sag,
Borne of the flow­ing water,
Ten­der­ly cared for by the Nin­hur­sag,

Hav­ing found­ed your town by the sacred lake,
She fin­ished its great walls for you,
Ninkasi, hav­ing found­ed your town by the sacred lake,
She fin­ished it’s walls for you,

Your father is Enki, Lord Nidim­mud,
Your moth­er is Nin­ti, the queen of the sacred lake.
Ninkasi, your father is Enki, Lord Nidim­mud,
Your moth­er is Nin­ti, the queen of the sacred lake.

You are the one who han­dles the dough [and] with a big shov­el,
Mix­ing in a pit, the bap­pir with sweet aro­mat­ics,
Ninkasi, you are the one who han­dles the dough [and] with a big shov­el,
Mix­ing in a pit, the bap­pir with [date] — hon­ey,

You are the one who bakes the bap­pir in the big oven,
Puts in order the piles of hulled grains,
Ninkasi, you are the one who bakes the bap­pir in the big oven,
Puts in order the piles of hulled grains,

You are the one who waters the malt set on the ground,
The noble dogs keep away even the poten­tates,
Ninkasi, you are the one who waters the malt set on the ground,
The noble dogs keep away even the poten­tates,

You are the one who soaks the malt in a jar,
The waves rise, the waves fall.
Ninkasi, you are the one who soaks the malt in a jar,
The waves rise, the waves fall.

You are the one who spreads the cooked mash on large reed mats,
Cool­ness over­comes,
Ninkasi, you are the one who spreads the cooked mash on large reed mats,
Cool­ness over­comes,

You are the one who holds with both hands the great sweet wort,
Brew­ing [it] with hon­ey [and] wine
(You the sweet wort to the ves­sel)
Ninkasi, (…)(You the sweet wort to the ves­sel)

The fil­ter­ing vat, which makes a pleas­ant sound,
You place appro­pri­ate­ly on a large col­lec­tor vat.
Ninkasi, the fil­ter­ing vat, which makes a pleas­ant sound,
You place appro­pri­ate­ly on a large col­lec­tor vat.

When you pour out the fil­tered beer of the col­lec­tor vat,
It is [like] the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates.
Ninkasi, you are the one who pours out the fil­tered beer of the col­lec­tor vat,
It is [like] the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cook Real Recipes from Ancient Rome: Ostrich Ragoût, Roast Wild Boar, Nut Tarts & More

The Art and Sci­ence of Beer

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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