Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Continuing...

H.G. Wells and J.L. Baird

by Malcolm Baird, January 2021

This year the Royal Mint has issued coins to mark the 75th anniversaries of the deaths of two highly creative British figures, one in literature and the other in science and technology. A 2-pound coin will recognise the novelist H.G. Wells (1866-1946), one of the earliest writers of science fiction a 50 pence coin will recognise John Logie Baird (1888-1946) and his pioneering work on television. The idea of television provides a connection between Wells the writer and Baird the inventor.

In Wells' novel The Sleeper Awakes (1899) the leading character, Graham, falls into a deep trance from which he awakes two centuries later without having aged in any way. This passage gives an uncannily accurate description of a video player, although lacking technical details:

[Graham] puzzled over this peculiar cylinder for some time and replaced it. Then he turned to the square apparatus and examined that. He opened a sort of lid and found one of the double cylinders within, and on the upper edge a little stud like the stud of an electric bell. He pressed this and a rapid clicking began and ceased. He became aware of voices and music, and noticed a play of colour on the smooth front face. He suddenly realised what this might be, and stepped back to regard it. On the flat surface was now a little picture, very vividly coloured, and in this picture were figures that moved. Not only did they move, but they were conversing in clear small voices.

As a boy growing up in Scotland, John Logie Baird was an avid reader of Wells and he had this to say when he wrote his memoirs in 1941:

I read a great deal of everything and anything and it is interesting to consider what out of all this I have retained. ...One popular author, however, soars far above all others and takes his place among the classics. In my boyhood and youth he was a demi-god, the reading of any new book by him I regarded as a feast: this was H.G. Wells, and today he still occupies a high place although he is no longer a demi-god. I have met him in the flesh and not many can submit to this ordeal and remain gods, certainly not H.G. Wells, that pleasant stubby little man with the squeaky voice. Nonetheless of the popular authors of my youth he is the only one who survives and actually takes his place among the classics.

Although there is no firm evidence that Baird was inspired by The Sleeper Awakes, it seems probable. It is known that he acquired a book by the German physicist Ernst Ruhmer on the photoelectric applications of the metal selenium. He found that the electric signals obtainable from selenium were extremely weak, but the idea of television stayed at the back of his mind until the 1920s by which time amplifiers were available. After three years of intense research, he demonstrated television to members of the Royal Institution on 26 January 1926.



Baird and Wells met for the first and only time in October 1931 onboard the Aquitania, en route to New York. Rather disappointingly, the two men found little to talk about. A later passage from Baird's memoirs ends this story:

Mr. Wells proved to be a substantially built man of medium height with a cap pulled over his eyes, utterly void of any affectation or any effort to impress. A great anticlimax it seemed after the magnificent Sir Oliver Lodge and other overpowering press personalities. No imposing facade here, only a poor vulgar creature like myself. We had a short chat about youth camps. I said these organisations appear to ignore sex. 'Oh well' he said, 'every Jack has his Jill', and that is all I remember of the conversation with my demigod.

H.G. Wells and J.L. Baird

Flash forward to present, Germans can celebrate 420 day with us Americans come April Fools'. LOL!


Germany legalises cannabis possession for personal use from April


Great short story from 2018 by Kim Asch:

They were the women responsible for sending and receiving coded messages between federal agencies in the event of a cataclysmic attack on  Washington, D.C.

They practiced their work in the subbasement of Lewis Hall of Science in a classified mission so cloaked even their own families were not privy.

The facility itself was perhaps the worst-kept secret on campus, but the story of what actually went on inside the bunker secured behind vaultlike doors, and of the women who faithfully carried out their work there, remained a mystery until now. Years after the program ended and was declassified in 2000, three of the women recruited and trained to maintain the operational readiness of the facility feel they can safely share their story.

“That’s the first time I typed on an electric typewriter,” says Herr, who had worked as a secretary on a manual model. The women became early computer users, long before the College or most any other civilian institution adopted them. They also learned to send encrypted messages on the KL-7, a cipher machine developed by the National Security Agency. They became adept at decoding incoming messages.

Hering says she felt “a greater sense of urgency” the one time she accompanied her supervisor, Marjorie Spangler Zerkel, to “the mountain,” the nickname for the bunker nestled into a hillside at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. That was the facility designed to house every member of the House and Senate in the event of Armageddon. “I don’t remember exactly why, but I remember taking our work even more seriously after that.”

6 page PDF

Alice Liddell, who inspired Alice in Wonderland (or was it Alexandra (Xie) Kitchin) at 80 years with Peter Llewelyn-Davis. In 1932, two years before her death, Alice Liddell, who was then eighty, was invited by Columbia University to the events to mark the centenary of Lewis Carroll's birth. During this visit to the United States, Alice met Peter Llewelyn-Davies, one of the brothers who inspired the character Peter Pan. This event was the central theme for the excellent movie "Dreamchild" released in 1985.


So... does this mean that Wonderland & Neverland share continuity?

The film's opening prologue reads: "In 1932, Alice Hargreaves, who long ago was Lewis Carroll's 'Alice' in Wonderland, is invited to New York City to celebrate his centenary. It is her first visit to the New World."

An exhibition about Alice in 2021 at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, has the Dreamchild poster in it, along with a page of Dennis Potter's script depicting the tea party. There is also a short clip from the film, with the ageing Alice Liddell seeing the ghost of Lewis Carroll, as well as the Mad Hatter, March Hare and the White Rabbit.


Explore PDR essays on poetry themes, including pieces on John Milton, Walt Whitman, G.M. Hopkins, A.C. Swinburne, Lewis Carroll, and Phillis Wheatley.




March 21, 1989: USS Tennessee (SSBN 734) conducted the first undersea test launch of the Trident II ballistic missile off the coast of Florida. It did not go well:




March 22, 2233: James Tiberius Kirk (prime timeline) was born in Riverside, Iowa. He shares his birthday with his real life counterpart, William Shatner, who turns 93 today!




2017 headline / 2024 headline:



Feline D’Rothschild...









Stop in for a nightcap...Good night...