Since You Asked

In 1956, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that the city of Williamsport could legally tax a Williamsport bar owner’s jukebox. One justice, Michael Musmanno, thought the machine shouldn’t be taxed — but:

In the eyes and ears of many people, including the writer of this opinion, a juke box confined to ‘jazz’ records may be a nuisance. It robs the air of sweet silence, it substitutes for the gentle concord of stillness the wailings of the so-called ‘blues singer,’ the whinings of foggy saxophones, the screeching of untuned fiddles, the blasts of head-splitting horns, and the battering of earshattering drums. It makes a mockery of music, it replaces harmony with cacophony, tonality with discord, and peace with annoyance.

Musmanno’s dissents could run to 20 pages — in another he called Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer “a cesspool, an open sewer, a pit of putrefaction, a slimy gathering of all that is rotten in the debris of human depravity.”

His reputation may have cost him — when asked whether he read Musmanno’s dissents, Chief Justice Horace Stern said he was not “interested in current fiction.”

| Society

Noted

For Old-Time Schools and School-Books (1904), Clifton Johnson scanned the flyleaves of old textbooks for notes scribbled by bygone students.

From Murray’s English Reader, 1822:

http://books.google.com/books?id=860AAAAAYAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s

In a schoolbook of 1844:

http://books.google.com/books?id=860AAAAAYAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s

And in a history book:

http://books.google.com/books?id=860AAAAAYAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s

| Society

Surface Matters

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/967390

If you touch a gold ball, you touch its surface and you touch gold. It seems reasonable to conclude that the surface is made of gold. But University of Exeter computer scientist Antony Galton points out that the surface is two-dimensional; it can’t contain any quantity of gold.

What then is it? We can’t say it’s the outermost layer of gold atoms, for that’s a film with two surfaces. And we can’t say it’s an abstract boundary with no physical existence, for we can see it and touch it. So what is it?

J.L. Austin asked, “Where and what exactly is the surface of a cat?”

| Science & Math

On Target

Write out the names of the natural numbers in English: ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, etc.

1 contains the first O, the first N, and the first E.
2 contains the second O.
3 contains the third E.

And:

11 contains the 11th E (onE two thrEE four fivE six sEvEn Eight ninE tEn ElEvEn).
24 contains the 24th T.
29 contains the 29th N.
31 contains the 31st N.
109 contains the 109th N.
199 contains the 199th D.
251 contains the 251st O.
454 contains the 454th U.
559 contains the 559th I.
1174 contains the 1174th O.
1716 contains the 1716th S.
5557 contains the 5557th F.
6957 contains the 6957th F.
15756 contains the 15756th F.
17155 contains the 17155th F.
24999 contains the 24999th Y.
43569 contains the 43569th F.
735759 contains the 735759th V.
1105807 contains the 1105807th V.
1107785 contains the 1107785th V.
1584504 contains the 1584504th V.
1707941 contains the 1707941st V.
1921567 contains the 1921567th L.

(Thanks, Claudio.)

| Language

The Early Bird

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oliver_Evans_(Engraving_by_W.G.Jackman,_cropped).jpg

In 1813, American inventor Oliver Evans envisioned a strange future:

“The time will come when people will travel in stages moved by steam engines, from one city to another, almost as fast as birds fly, fifteen or twenty miles an hour. Passing through the air with such velocity, changing the scene in such rapid succession, will be the most exhilarating, delightful exercise. A carriage will set out from Washington in the morning, the passengers will breakfast at Baltimore, dine at Philadelphia, and sup at New York, the same day. To accomplish this, two sets of railways will be laid, so nearly level as not in any place to deviate more than two degrees from a horizontal line, made of wood or iron, or smooth paths of broken stone or gravel, with a rail to guide the carriages, so that they may pass each other in different directions, and travel by night as well as by day; and the passengers will sleep in these stages as comfortably as they now do in steam stage boats.”

Unable to obtain financing, he abandoned the project and turned to other work. Thirteen years later, George Stephenson built the first public steam railway.

| Technology

Sleep Tight!

“For Children Three Years Old,” from Lessons for Children by Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Philadelphia, 1818:

There was a naughty boy; I do not know what his name was, but it was not Charles, nor George, nor Arthur, for those are all very pretty names: but there was a robin came in at his window one very cold morning — shiver — shiver; and its poor little heart was almost frozen to death. And he would not give it the least crumb of bread in the world, but pulled it about by the tail and hurt it sadly, and it died. Now a little while after, the naughty boy’s papa and mamma went away and left him, and then he could get no victuals at all, for you know he could not take care of himself. So he went about to every body — Pray give me something to eat, — I am very hungry. And every body said, No, we shall give you none, for we do not love cruel, naughty boys. So he went about from one place to another, till at last he got into a thick wood of trees; for he did not know how to find his way any where; and then it grew dark, quite dark night. So he sat down and cried sadly; and I believe the bears came and eat him up in the wood, for I never heard any thing about him afterwards.

| Literature

Just Visiting

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Waterloo_Hoax_Airship_1897.jpg

The residents of Waterloo, Iowa, were surprised to find a 36-foot airship in their midst in April 1897. Constructed of canvas and wood and fitted out with “compressors and generators,” the ship was attended by several “operators” who told the townspeople that they had come from San Francisco. Five thousand Iowans surrounded the machine, but the men forbade them “to inspect the machinery, and any attempt to cross the rope fence … was met with an order to stay out.” When one of the “crew” said that “one man had fallen overboard just before landing,” the townspeople organized a party to search the river for him when they realized that “the entire affair was a joke.” (Des Moines Leader, April 11, 1897)

A rash of airship sightings swept the western United States that month. If the pilots were aliens, they had some endearingly quaint technology — here’s an account from the Houston Daily Post:

Merkel, Texas, April 26. Some parties returning from church last night noticed a heavy object dragging along with a rope attached. They followed it until in crossing the railroad it caught on a rail. On looking up they saw what they supposed was the airship. It was not near enough to get an idea of the dimensions. A light could be seen protruding from several windows; one bright light in front like the headlight of a locomotive. After some ten minutes a man was seen descending the rope; he came near enough to be plainly seen. He wore a light blue sailor suit, was small in size. He stopped when he discovered parties at the anchor and cut the ropes below him and sailed off in a northeast direction. The anchor is now on exhibition at the blacksmith shop of Elliott and Miller and is attracting the attention of hundreds of people.

| Hoaxes