Silvio Bedini

A friend and fellow Ridgefielder, Silvio Bedini, died at age 90 on November 14, 2007.

Silvio was a very interesting man, indeed.  I could not have summed up Silvio's life more eloquantly as did Robert Post in his article in Technology & Culture (April, 2008):   In memoriam: Silvio A. Bedini, 1917-2007.  I will mention some the highlights from that article here. 

Silvio was born in Ridgefield, CT and lived there until he entered Columbia University in 1935.  He left Columbia University to enlist in the Army and was eventually assigned to top secret military intelligence in Fairfax, VA and ended up in 1945 as chief MIS-X liason with the Pentagon.  Silvio's Army career came to an end with the end of WWII.  He then returned to Ridgefield and joined his father's contracting business doing landscaping. He had expected to return to Columbia, but his father's failing health precluded this.

 While working for the family company he would study history in the evening and began to write articles... He wrote for encyclopedias and for what were called 'true science' comics, which, like 'classic comics,' were designed to spice up elementary school curricula.

He got interested in antiquarian clocks and books and made the acquantance of Derek de solla Price at Yale and Bern Dibner at Burndy Corp.

For his first book in 1958 he wrote Ridgefield in Review, a history of his home town, for the 250th aniversary celebration.

Thereafter, he was invited to join the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of History and Technology and Mel Kranzberg's Society for the History of Technology. These were the two most critical events central to establishing the history of technology as a scholarly discipline.

There were so many connections that Silvio and I shared. We were both Ridgefielders, although I must admit he was there way before me since I arrived in 1975 and he in 1917. We both had professional acquaintences in common: Derek De Sola Price at Yale, Bern Dibner at the Burndy Library in Norwalk, then there was the Columbia connection, the cryptography connection, the gardening, and, of course, the antique scientific instruments.  

He had come up to Ridgefield in 2007 for a visit with freinds and family, and, unfortunately, we missed each other on that trip.  Then, we were scheduled to have lunch together shortly before he died, but that got cancelled due to his ill health, and then he was gone. Gale, his wife, died shortly thereafter.  Silvio and Gale were buried in St. Mary's Cemetary, Ridgefield on May 31, 2008.  The world lost a real gem in his passing.

Joseph Priestley in Calne by Norman Beale

Hobnob Press (UK), 2008, 90pp.

ISBN	0946418810, 9780946418817

I finally read through this paperback book (it is a relatively short book that is a quick read) just before we went to Bowood House just outside of Calne in North Wiltshire.  The book was undertaken by Norman Beale, who is a local retired doctor who took a fancy to study the history of the famous Priestley in the years he was in service to the Marquis of Lansdowne who resided at Bowood House.

Mr. Beale has clearly not written a biography for the general public's consumption before. Perhaps this is why he has self published this work. While I discovered many interesting details about the life of this famous enlightenment hero that I had not known before, I found the style a little wanting.  I particularly was put off by his tendency to nit pick little points where his interpretation of some detail was ever so slightly different from what others had concluded, many times without any real basis for all the hubbub. I suppose he could have just stated his interpretation without going into the distinction to what was previously recorded by others.

While the book does concentrate on the years when he was in Calne, it does cover the time both before and after he was located there, but in a more abbreviated form.  I am glad that Mr. Beale has both taken the time to research and write the book, but, also, that he has clearly invested his own funds to assure that the book was made available to a wide audience. The final product was produced very professionally.

I, for one, would have thought that a more rigorous account of the "science" would have been presented, but I am grateful for what I got.  Most great science is a lot of very tedious and menial chores.  I can recall from reading Priestley's letters in the "Scientific Correspondence of Joseph Priestley" the letters that went on and on about the most insignificant and irrelevant matters, but that is how progress in science is made.

There is far too little written and known about this superstar of the enlightenment available to the public.  If you are ever planning on going to Bowood House, I strongly recommend that you read the book beforehand.  The staff at Bowood House seems to be oblivious to the Priestley connection in spite of the fact that there is a room there where he first "discovered" or better yet "isolated" oxygen (dephlogisticated air, as he called it).  The book is available at Bowood House, but it is a little too long to read while you are there, so do your homework.  It is available on Amazon. I bought my copy on eBay.

In spite of the ignorance of the staff at Bowood House I would still strongly recommend the visit there.  The portrait of Priestley by Gilbert Stuart is the best painting I have ever seen of Priestley (even though it is a reproduction). In walking down the hallway past the laboratory and over to the library, I could feel the hairs on my neck stand up just thinking about the fact that Joseph himself had walked these very steps almost 250 years before me. That experience is very close to the experience I had holding his Rushing Water bookplate.

Oh, if I could have been a fly on the wall when he was there.  Please don't expect to find his laboratory intact.  All the laboratory equipment was sold long long ago.

Stevie Wonder Opening Act For Bill Clinton

San Francisco (Dec. 8, 2010). Bill Clinton gave the keynote speech at the Salesforce.com's DreamForce conference this evening. Due to the inclement weather President Clinton's plane was delayed. Consequently, Stevie Wonder and Mark Benioff had about a one hour discussion on Stevie Wonder's life and inspirations for his music.

At the conclusion of the discussion Stevie Wonder introduced the President. Clinton, upon taking to the podium Clinton said "never thought that a mediocre musician like myself would have Stevie Wonder as an opening act."

Clinton then got down to more serious topics including the disparity in wealth that has become woven into the American society. He cited statistics that there is more disparity in the US now than there ever was in Latin America and other developing nations. He referred to the need for Americans to think for the future.

Stevie Wonder and President Bill Clinton

Another Historic Milestone in Human Civilization is Crossed

It was reported in the media on March 13, 2012 that the last printed edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica has been printed. A milestone to be recorded along side that of the ending of the publication of the logarithmic tables in the CRC Handbook and the use of the slide rule, to mention a few of the other milestones of civilization. The Encyclopaedia Britannica has been printed continuously since it was first published in Edinburgh Scottland in 1768.

I remember, sometime in the early '70s when you could finally purchase a calculator to compute a logarithm with a device of smaller volume than the section of tables consumed within the CRC Handbook.

Other milestones that have been passed:

Dialing a rotary telephone

Using a floppy disc

Use of the typewriter or carbon paper

Photography based upon developing silver emulsion film

Elimination of ice to cool refrigerators

The elimination of the telephone book as a means of finding a residential phone number.

Elimination of the cord on a residential telephone line

Other looming milestones are:

elimination of the phone booth

the ebook replacement of the paper book

the mobil phone replacement of the residential phone line.

If you have some others you would like to add to this list please add some of your own.

Space Shuttle ENDEAVOUR Over San Francisco Skies

I watched with awe yesterday as the space shuttle Endeavour passed overhead on its final trip to its resting place in the Los Angeles area.  Here was the symbol of an era being carried on the back of a Boeing 747 on its funeral march going to its final resting place. It reminded me of the funeral procession for President Kennedy after his assassination in 1963, as his flag-draped coffin was carried on a horse-drawn caisson to the Capitol building to lie in state.  In a strange way, these two events are tied to each other as the two anchor points on an era of manned space flight: Kennedy having been the President when Glenn first made his orbit of the Earth and also putting the stake in the ground challenging the nation to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade, and the shuttle funeral march signaling the end.  This was one of the most memorable events I have seen in years. 

The NASA space age Odyssey of human space exploration spans my entire adult life. 
I was a high school senior when John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, entered his Mercury capsule to be hurled into space on February 20, 1962.
I was a college junior and senior when the Gemini program was launching space capsules.
I was in grad school and just married the month before Niel Armstrong set foot on the Moon in July 1969.
My first son was born a few months before the Apollo 13 mission in April, 1970
Apollo 17,  the eleventh and final  mission to the moon in December, 1972, was completed shortly before I completed my doctorate and the birth of my second son. 
The Apollo Soyuz space hook up was in 1975, just as I took my position at Columbia University.
The first space shuttle mission occurred in April, 1981, just as we launched our first PC software product. The events continued on through the decades, some good, some bad:
--the space shuttle Challenger disaster which occurred in January, 1986
--the Hubble space telescope launch in April, 1990
--the disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia February, 2003
are all marked by corresponding events in my life.

JOSEPH PRIESTLEY'S 'RUSHING WATER' BOOKPLATE

One of my most prized possessions is this bookplate that belonged to Joseph Priestley and was most likely affixed by his very hands to one of his books. Very few of these bookplates exist at this time since his library at Fair Hill in Birmingham was destroyed in the riots of 1791 along with many of the books in his library.

Priestley’s ‘Rushing Water’ bookplate

The ‘Rushing Water’ bookplate was first described by Charles A. Browne in The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, Vol. 12, No.6, June 1920, p. 611. According to Browne: The plate was engraved by Josiah Allen of Birmingham and represents a stream of water gushing through a spout from under a massive rock into a smooth glassy pool. A stone curb, overgrown with grass and flowers, surrounds the spring, on one side of which lies a cup for the convenience of the thirsty wayfarer... For simplicity and charm, the writer has seen no bookplate which surpasses this one. For a chemist who worked so much upon the composition of water, the theme…is most appropriate, while for those who have drawn inspiration from the life and works of Priestley…the symbolism of a fountainhead has an added significance.

When Priestley’s home in Birmingham was attacked by a mob in 1791, most of his books were destroyed, although some survived (see H. C. Bolton, Scientific Letters of Joseph Priestley, New York: privately printed, 1891; letter 78).

Browne found this plate in a copy of The Laboratory or School of Arts by George Smith, “a translation of a German collection of receipts for working gold and silver” (London: T. Cox, 1738), which he had acquired from a dealer in London. Browne claims that he had seen no previous mention of this particular plate and implies that Priestley used the plate in books he had prior to the 1791 riot. Andrea Bashmore, a former historic site administrator at the Joseph Priestley House, has found the ‘Rushing Water’ bookplate in The Works of Peter Pindar (Dublin: Peter Porter, 1795) in the Priestley House collection, which seems to negate the idea that the plate was used pre-1791. In fact, Priestley was already in Pennsylvania when this work was printed.  

The bookplate measures 7.6 x 10.5 cm.

Subsequent to writing this entry in 2012 I have learned that the Priestley Bookplate issue is much more substantial than what I wrote. I am putting together a new entry on the Priestley Bookplate issue. I will append that link here when I have completed it.

Sir Francis Drake and the Unusual Sundial at his Country Estate at Buckland Abbey

We were travelling through Devon this last summer and went to visit the country estate of Sir Francis Drake at Buckland Abbey, a large manor house near Yelverton. I thought it would be fitting, given the posted theme and headline picture of this blog, to add here a description of the unusual sundial we found at the home of this great explorer.

It is unlike any other sundial I have ever seen.

Drake purchased Buckland Abbey in 1580 and lived there for fifteen years until his final voyage. The Abbey is currently administered by the National Trust. We found the sundial on the uppermost floor of the Abbey on the south western side of the building.

What you see in the picture to the left above is the stained glass window (as seen from the inside) with a map of the Atlantic Ocean showing the bordering continents of Europe, Africa, North and South America. There is also a compass rose where England is located and the hour lines for the sundial radiating out from the rose. Drake's ship the Golden Hind is depicted riding the sea along the eight o'clock line on course from Plymouth to Porto Bello where an encircled cross indicates the position of Drake's burial site. There is also a heraldic emblem and a legend. I believe it to be that of the Drake family. The metal gnomon for the sundial is located on the outside and casts its shadow onto the window which can be viewed from the inside. The reason the line for noon is not vertical is that the south western side of the building is not facing exactly to the south and so the lines are adjusted accordingly.

 The sundial commemorates the four hundredth anniversary of Drake's death (1596-1996) and was designed by Christopher Daniel and made in the studios of Goddard and Gibbs by Lord Cardross and Norman Attwood.  The undertaking was funded through the bequest of Dr. Ellinger and the Plymouth Centre of the National Trust.

I have found a reference to this sundial as sundial 10 here.