Skyscrapers looked more imposing, somehow, in the black-and-white photographs from a bygone era. Maybe it's the absence of the reflective glass facades with their false sky intervals and over-abundance of bland stone walls... Or maybe it's the (barely visible) spiderwebs spread between the towers by the energetic Peter Parker? Perhaps it's glamorous ladies entering a glitzy club, or the aromas emanating from a genuine Jewish Deli?.. Either way, New York of 1920s-1960s period is a very special place indeed:
(1931 Gotham City skyline, click to enlarge on Shorpy, photo by Samuel Gottscho)
Thanks to the wonderful Lileks site, many old postcards have been preserved and proudly displayed with fascinating history attached. One thing to notice, is that the wonderful structures of that era seem to benefit from the open and uncluttered urban landscape of the time (less build-up, more parking lots, more empty space), easily commanding the attention they justly deserve.
The Building that stood before the World Trade Center:
Hudson Terminal Building covered two full square blocks and was every bit as massive as the World Trade Center towers built on the same space later. It was truly one of the largest office building in the world... Looks very imposing, almost on the verge of being oppressive:
Found through Skyscraper City display of the vintage color photographs of American cities, the exceptional Charles W. Cushman Collection shows New York in 1941 and 1960 - and it looks great, even with its gaudy "pulp-ish" color scheme.
It is also fascinating to compare the skylines of yesteryear with modern "commercial jungle" landscape:
kopapaka / www.palba.cz quote: "Blogger Francesca said... The blimp picture collage includes a blimp with the Nazi swastika on it...surely that's not in New York?" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_129_Hindenburg
About the Blimp with a Nazi Swastika. The Hindenburg was a German airship after all. The Nazis were in power for several years before the war started and regular trade did take place so it's not too surprising to see a Swastika on a blimp.
The Hotel Edison is still standing and seems to have been spiffed up in recent years. Also, a few of the black & white photos are by Samuel Gottscho. The Museum of the City of New York has many more in its digital collection. I just showcased a bunch of them on my blog - http://bit.ly/eqt5fk
It's worth saying that these animals are extremely shy. When I saw one, it was from a lodge that overlooked a small dam, so the platypus didn't know we were there. An Australian present said in awe, "Ninety-five percent of Australians will never see one in the wild."
the plural of 'platypus' is correctly 'platypodes' although everyone in oz just says 'platypii' (yeah i'm an aussie) i lived in the country and has a family of platypus in the creedk behind my house. such beautiful animals!
You are correct about the proper plural of platypus. The same ending goes with "octopus" since that word, also, was of Greek origin. The "i" words (octupi, platypi) presume the words were originally Latin. RR, you were so lucky to live near a family of them - I've never seen a live one.
As a (former) Australian I am happy to see Perry the Platypus as the silent chick-magnet character on Phineas and Ferb and a worthy nemesis of the evil Heinz Doofenshmirtz.
They are common, not rare. There are some at my property and I have seen them in the day, even when having a party ! Water-birds peck at them to make them dive and drive up other food !
I would like to see your source for John Dees "flying " beetle. it is an oft repeated claim but the only proper description I could find of this is in a history of his life
For this play he devised a clever mechanical and very spectacular effect. Trygaeus, the Attic vine-dresser, carrying a large basket of food for himself, and mounted on his gigantic beetle or scarab (which ate only dung), was seen ascending from his dwelling on the stage to enter the palace of Zeus in the clouds above. One has only to think of the scenic effects presented by Faust and Mephistopheles at Mr. Tree’s theatre, for instance, to realise how crude and ineffective these attempts must have been; but thirty or forty years before Shakespeare’s plays were written, so unusual an exhibition was enough to excite wild rumours of supernatural powers.
From the diagram you print it does not look like something that could actually fly.
Also I think the present day robot makers must be missing something. They seem to be having huge problems getting autonomous robots to walk. Maybe they should try copying George Moores steam man! Although a closer examination of the literature shows "When he developed a head of steam he could walk, but only in circles, since he was attached to a horezontal radius arm" But hey why let the facts get in the way of a good story! Oh and why no mention of Faberges stuperb automata?
Droz, not Doz. I seem to recall the history of the chess player is actually quite a bit more complicated, and may not have been intended as a hoax originally, but I lack the time needed to check. Nice work!
You should also have a look at the automatons used in the Takayama festival in Gifu prefecture on Japan. I think they are around 400 years old and are quite impressive. There is one interesting one outside a restaurant that has a man "magic trick" with a box. Every time he lifts the box it reveals another item on the menu. It is powered by a water wheel which sits in one of the open drains that line the streets。I found a video of it here... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxEUY0Y97Mw
I feel like the concept of "make it as thick as the earth to deal with gravity" suggests a lack of attention to high school physics.
Mass creates gravity, sure, but when we're not dealing with a nice, convenient, ball, you're going to have issues with exactly what direction gravity is pulling you. Hollow or not, you will be pulled towards the centre of mass. In the Dyson Sphere, that's the centre of the sun. With the disc it's a bit more of a complex math problem.
In response to Neil, the concept of the disc is actually much more complicated than high school physics allows, as does this article. Gravity on a flat plane is significantly different from that of a sphere, as it will always be perpendicular to the surface. See the wikipedia article on Alderson Discs for an easy-to-follow refernce. However, as you approach the sun, there would be a shearing effect as the sun's gravity competed with the disc's.
There's one more megascale structure from a more recent SF novel. It's not as large as the others but honstly? it's much more fun, and that counts, doesn't it? I'm talking about Karl Schroeder Virga structure - basically a hollowed-out baloon the size of a planet, filled with air. there's no gravity inside so you can fly in the air. You live on rocks that float inside the environment, or in floating cities built like small rotating halos / space stations. For light, you need a large artificial sun in the middle or have smaller artificial suns placed throughout the structure. There's probably less room for people inside one of these then there's on a regular planet the same size but You can make lots of similar structures from the material of one planet - provided you have air to fill all of them. Also, you don't need an impossibly high tensile strength like you need to build a ringworld. Lastly, if you live in such a structure you can fly by flapping your arm - that's just awesome.
The problem with the Gibraltar dam is that the water lost from the Med ends up in the oceans, raising sea levels and reducing land area around the world. The net increase in land area would be negligible, and some inhabited areas would be flooded. Someone didn't think it all through!
'Ringworld' is an awesome trilogy. It should be noted that its much 'wider than the planet' About a million miles across I believe between the 1000 mile high edges. Havent seen an illustration yet that accurately portrays this.
Megastructures like Dyson spheres and Alderson discs are recurring themes in science fiction; back in the seventies a similar article (with, alas, sketches rather than the fine illustrations in this article) was published in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact. i believe it, too, was titled "Bigger Than Worlds."
Very few images of Ringworld are realistic; there used to be some images created with POV-Ray that showed that at 93 some million miles from the sun, the even a million mile wide ringworld is almost invisible from the far side (which would be 186 million miles away).
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9 Comments:
Love this series!
The picture of Fifth Avenue, 1913...can you imagine how bad the petrol fumes would have been?
Brilliant article Avi and love those pics! New York is one awesome city!
The blimp picture collage includes a blimp with the Nazi swastika on it...surely that's not in New York?
kopapaka / www.palba.cz
quote: "Blogger Francesca said...
The blimp picture collage includes a blimp with the Nazi swastika on it...surely that's not in New York?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_129_Hindenburg
About the Blimp with a Nazi Swastika. The Hindenburg was a German airship after all. The Nazis were in power for several years before the war started and regular trade did take place so it's not too surprising to see a Swastika on a blimp.
The Hotel Edison is still standing and seems to have been spiffed up in recent years. Also, a few of the black & white photos are by Samuel Gottscho. The Museum of the City of New York has many more in its digital collection. I just showcased a bunch of them on my blog - http://bit.ly/eqt5fk
Thank you Michele, credit adjusted, great info
The ship in the 5th photo down is the "SS American Star" that was wrecked in the Canary Islands during the 1990s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_America_(1940)
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