Confess it. You’ve been to some sort of fast food restaurant. You probably felt obliged sometime to express your guilt. “I know I shouldn’t eat this stuff.” But from MacDonald’s to Minute Rice, twenty-first century people, like their immediate predecessors, are obsessed with speed, often at the expense of quality and health. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that the obsessions of our times go back more than a century.
In 1878 Scientific American reported that Mrs. Lawton of Carrolton, MO, made her guests biscuits from wheat that had been growing in her fields. No big deal? The wheat was reaped and delivered by swift horse to the mill in 2 minutes, 17 seconds and then delivered to Mrs. Lawton’s who immediately made griddle cakes, taking only another one minute and 38 seconds to bake. “In 4 minutes 37 seconds from the starting of he reaper, a pan of biscuits was delivered to the assembled guests.”* That, my friend, is really fast food—and done without a microwave.
In the same year that Mrs. Lawton made her fast food, James Goodheart of Matawan, N.J., improved a machine for “Distributing Poison upon potato plants to destroy the potato bug.” The machine could “also be used for sowing seeds.” Looks like the perfect combinations: Fast food, poison, and sowing with a machine also used for distributing poison. What more could a modern person ask for?
How about “crooked journalism”? In 1878, also, we see one of the roots of our times: Slanted writing. Seems that a writer for Engineering spun a story about one of Edison’s inventions in which largely by omission, he tilted credit to Mr. Hughes and away from Edison. The Scientific American editors, taking Engineering’s reporter to task, say, “Altogether the article is the most dishonest piece of writing we have ever seen in a scientific periodical.” (*Ibid.). So, 1878 was also a significant forerunner of today’s spread of news influenced by bias.
And then there’s sport. In the same year two velocipedists (a bicycle of the times) did a Tour de France, including parts of Italy and southern Switzerland, traveling more than 3,000 miles between March 16 and April 24, for one segment from Turin to Milan traveling 90 miles in 9 hours 30 minutes. And it was also the year that someone turned an unassisted triple play in baseball.
And now robots and Artificial Intelligence: Aren’t we concerned about machines taking the place of humans, practically eliminating the sentient beings from the workplace and replacing them with efficient, never-tiring mechanical workers? Here’s another statement from Scientific American in 1878: “Already we notice several instances in which the workmen, renouncing their prejudices have willingly consented to the substitution of machine for hand work, and we doubt not that the success of these innovations, conjoined with the pressure of the times, will ere long create a complete revolution in the ideas of the British workmen, so that instead of longer opposing radical change is not necessarily far in the future, for the logic of it has long been working in the brains of both masters and men and may reasonably bear fruit at any time.” It was also a year when the magazine included an article about uneven wages.
Are we reliving 1878? Got your smart phone nearby? This is what Scientific American reported: “The characteristic avidity with which the American people seize upon a novelty has been wonderfully exemplified by the manner in which the telephone mania has spread.” You don’t have that mania, do you?
The parallels are getting a bit overwhelming. Wearing polarized shades outside? The same year saw developments in polarized lenses. Following the climate debate about the influence of the sun and sunspot activity? You guessed it. In 1878 people began using cameras to study the sun and its “spots.” Worried about how global warming might be affecting the oceans, causing, for example, the bleaching of corals? In 1878 guys named Negretti and Zambra invented a thermometer that enabled the English navy to measure ocean temperatures at different depths. Concerned about fresh water use? New Yorkers realized they were in the midst of a multi-year drought.
Have an anti-rollover system in your car? In 1878 Jonas Bowman patented an improved vehicle spring that reduced the tilting and pitching motion that occurs during a turn. Been to the dentist? Thank Dr. G. R. Thomas of Detroit for experimenting with operations to “replant teeth.” Think organ transplants are special? Dr. Thomas transplanted the tooth of a woman into the mouth of a man.
Going to watch the August solar eclipse? Yep. There was one in 1878. Going to change the oil in your car? Again, the use of petroleum lubricating oils was a big topic among those using the machines of the times. And oil derricks reached new drilling depths the same year. Think modern schools don’t give kids practical education? What do you think the discussion was about schools in 1878? The question of the day: Are kids going to school to learn “compulsory ignorance”? Apparently, the concern of the day was that kids were not learning practical skills and knowledge useful in an age of rapidly improving technologies.
Finally, disease and war. Someone tried to cure cancer by applying pressure to the blood vessels feeding tumors. You might guess that the technique was not very successful, and today, just as in 1878, we’re still running experiments on cancer cures. Same year: Greece and Turkey went to war; the Brits sent 40,000 troops into Afghanistan.
Why did I make you read all this? Think of our beliefs that we are “modern” and that we are technologically advanced and highly sophisticated. What you read above and other parallels with life in 1878 that I didn’t mention point to the continuity of human problems, solutions, and frustrations. We really aren’t much different from our 1878 predecessors. We might have tweaked a few machines, but the overall nature of our concerns isn’t radically different. Seems that only little over a century ago people had concerns similar to our own.
What do you think human concerns will be a little over a century from now?
* http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43282/43282-h/43282-h.htm#The_Treatment_of_Cancer_by_Pressure
In 1878 Scientific American reported that Mrs. Lawton of Carrolton, MO, made her guests biscuits from wheat that had been growing in her fields. No big deal? The wheat was reaped and delivered by swift horse to the mill in 2 minutes, 17 seconds and then delivered to Mrs. Lawton’s who immediately made griddle cakes, taking only another one minute and 38 seconds to bake. “In 4 minutes 37 seconds from the starting of he reaper, a pan of biscuits was delivered to the assembled guests.”* That, my friend, is really fast food—and done without a microwave.
In the same year that Mrs. Lawton made her fast food, James Goodheart of Matawan, N.J., improved a machine for “Distributing Poison upon potato plants to destroy the potato bug.” The machine could “also be used for sowing seeds.” Looks like the perfect combinations: Fast food, poison, and sowing with a machine also used for distributing poison. What more could a modern person ask for?
How about “crooked journalism”? In 1878, also, we see one of the roots of our times: Slanted writing. Seems that a writer for Engineering spun a story about one of Edison’s inventions in which largely by omission, he tilted credit to Mr. Hughes and away from Edison. The Scientific American editors, taking Engineering’s reporter to task, say, “Altogether the article is the most dishonest piece of writing we have ever seen in a scientific periodical.” (*Ibid.). So, 1878 was also a significant forerunner of today’s spread of news influenced by bias.
And then there’s sport. In the same year two velocipedists (a bicycle of the times) did a Tour de France, including parts of Italy and southern Switzerland, traveling more than 3,000 miles between March 16 and April 24, for one segment from Turin to Milan traveling 90 miles in 9 hours 30 minutes. And it was also the year that someone turned an unassisted triple play in baseball.
And now robots and Artificial Intelligence: Aren’t we concerned about machines taking the place of humans, practically eliminating the sentient beings from the workplace and replacing them with efficient, never-tiring mechanical workers? Here’s another statement from Scientific American in 1878: “Already we notice several instances in which the workmen, renouncing their prejudices have willingly consented to the substitution of machine for hand work, and we doubt not that the success of these innovations, conjoined with the pressure of the times, will ere long create a complete revolution in the ideas of the British workmen, so that instead of longer opposing radical change is not necessarily far in the future, for the logic of it has long been working in the brains of both masters and men and may reasonably bear fruit at any time.” It was also a year when the magazine included an article about uneven wages.
Are we reliving 1878? Got your smart phone nearby? This is what Scientific American reported: “The characteristic avidity with which the American people seize upon a novelty has been wonderfully exemplified by the manner in which the telephone mania has spread.” You don’t have that mania, do you?
The parallels are getting a bit overwhelming. Wearing polarized shades outside? The same year saw developments in polarized lenses. Following the climate debate about the influence of the sun and sunspot activity? You guessed it. In 1878 people began using cameras to study the sun and its “spots.” Worried about how global warming might be affecting the oceans, causing, for example, the bleaching of corals? In 1878 guys named Negretti and Zambra invented a thermometer that enabled the English navy to measure ocean temperatures at different depths. Concerned about fresh water use? New Yorkers realized they were in the midst of a multi-year drought.
Have an anti-rollover system in your car? In 1878 Jonas Bowman patented an improved vehicle spring that reduced the tilting and pitching motion that occurs during a turn. Been to the dentist? Thank Dr. G. R. Thomas of Detroit for experimenting with operations to “replant teeth.” Think organ transplants are special? Dr. Thomas transplanted the tooth of a woman into the mouth of a man.
Going to watch the August solar eclipse? Yep. There was one in 1878. Going to change the oil in your car? Again, the use of petroleum lubricating oils was a big topic among those using the machines of the times. And oil derricks reached new drilling depths the same year. Think modern schools don’t give kids practical education? What do you think the discussion was about schools in 1878? The question of the day: Are kids going to school to learn “compulsory ignorance”? Apparently, the concern of the day was that kids were not learning practical skills and knowledge useful in an age of rapidly improving technologies.
Finally, disease and war. Someone tried to cure cancer by applying pressure to the blood vessels feeding tumors. You might guess that the technique was not very successful, and today, just as in 1878, we’re still running experiments on cancer cures. Same year: Greece and Turkey went to war; the Brits sent 40,000 troops into Afghanistan.
Why did I make you read all this? Think of our beliefs that we are “modern” and that we are technologically advanced and highly sophisticated. What you read above and other parallels with life in 1878 that I didn’t mention point to the continuity of human problems, solutions, and frustrations. We really aren’t much different from our 1878 predecessors. We might have tweaked a few machines, but the overall nature of our concerns isn’t radically different. Seems that only little over a century ago people had concerns similar to our own.
What do you think human concerns will be a little over a century from now?
* http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43282/43282-h/43282-h.htm#The_Treatment_of_Cancer_by_Pressure
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