Bench Grass

Bench Grass is a blog about the history of technology by the former student of a student of Lynn White. The main focus is a month-by-month retrospective series, covering the technology news, broadly construed, of seventy years ago, framed by fictional narrators. The author is Erik Lund, an "independent scholar" in Vancouver, British Columbia. Last post will be 24 July 2039.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

A Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, August 1947: The Science of Cozy

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Because honestly,  The Engineer : Who wants to hear about heating houses in August? Or a really hot, summery Vancouver September, for that m...
Sunday, October 22, 2017

Postblogging Technnology, September 1947: Drilling Sideways

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R_. C_., _. Roxborough Crescent, Vancouver, Canada Dear Dad: I hope that you're not too surprised to get this addressed f...
Saturday, October 14, 2017

An Intermittently Technical Appendix to Thalassocracy, 3: Bonanza Farms, Smokeless Powder and Endorheic Basins

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This is a post about asymmetries of power, the globalisation of the grain trade, and the parts of the world where waters flow down to inlan...
3 comments:
Tuesday, October 3, 2017

On Thalassocracy, III: Warrior And Wheat

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Lake Sidi Ali, in the Moroccan Atlas, 2000m above sea level. So not quite the Sahara Sea. Thucydides said, early in his Peloponnesian ...
8 comments:
Tuesday, September 26, 2017

A Surprisingly Technical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, August 194: Sealion Away!

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Pearl Primus : Please pretend this amazing picture is somehow relevant to coal shortages in the United Kingdom in 1947.  Operation Seal...
9 comments:
Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Nimrod Was The First Of Those Who Were Mighty On the Earth: The 77mm HV, Technological Progress, And the 1940 Counterfactual

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History is, as I never tire of saying, a floating referent. It's never entirely clear where to start, and, in the case of a counterfa...
Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Postblogging Technology, August 1947, II: At the Stroke of the Midnight Hour

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R. C., _. Roxborough Crescent, Vancouver, Canada Dear Dad: Based on the last package, this will get to you before a...
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Erik Lund
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