The Bishop's Sea (And, incidentally and Minimally, a Technical Appendix): Coldingham

Since I'm in the very earliest stages of putting together Postblogging Technology, January 1949, I: Uhm, Something Clever I Hope, thanks to Lameen for starting an easily followed hare!

Besides, with Brexit speeding rapidly towards the next thing that happens, what better time to return to the theme of European immigrants overrunning sea-girt Albion?

By Tom1955 - Based on an extract of a small part of the map of Berwickshire in
Philips Handy Administrative Atlas of Scotland, 1900 (out of copyright),
which was then editted and enhanced to show Coldingham.
Previously published: No prior publication, CC BY-SA 3.0,
 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50014872

That's Coldingham, Berwickshire, Scotland, a little off centre courtesy of the Atlas of Hillforts site, via a piece of Microsoft software that's trying to compete with Google Earth. (Which reminds me of a new phrase I learned a few months ago. "Good hustle, Redmond.") It's off-centre because the hillfort in question is at St. Abb's Head, a brisk pre-lunch walk from Coldingham proper.

Britain being Britain, even an unoccupied nature reserve has a Wikipedia page, to which you can refer if you'd like to know a bit more about this bit of scenery. If the world already throws more links than anyone wants to follow at you, I have deployed my snipping tool for a bit more intellectual property theft: 

By Emoscopes - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4155435

St. Aebbe's Head has been associated with St. Aebbe of Coldingham since at least 1200, when an official history of the Palatine Bishopric of Durham claimed that, at the time that a cell of Durham was established at Coldingham proper, there was a cult of St. Aebbe at St. Abb's Head. The Venerable Bede tells us that St. Aebbe, daughter of Aethelfrith of Bernicia and sister of Oswald, King in the North, founded "double monasteries" (monasteries for monks and nuns) at Ebchester and then at a place that he calls Urbs Coludi. Since "Coludi" is a British name, it follows that the "Urbs Coludi" is an antediluvian hillfort, or possibly a spectacular coastal setting similar to Lindisfarne. It is then inferred that the name got tired of the draft and wandered inland a bit to Kirk Hill in Coldingham village, where Coldingham Priory sat until its secularisation during the Reformation. 

This isn't exactly airtight, but it is solidly in line with the information that we do have, and points in various directions, so archaeological confirmation of a Northumbrian-era elite site at Coldingham is a useful contribution to the problem of the plantation of the Atlantic. 

A Technological And Also Social Appendix to Postblogging Technology, December 1948, II: The Optics of Computing

So Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics gets a full page review in the 27 December issue of Time. I'm a bit worried that it'll hit Newsweek mid-January, and we'll miss it, and there's an important point to be made. With President Obama recently in the news warning brain workers that they'll all be out of a job real soon now due to artificial intelligence and stuff like that, I don't want to miss the moment!

"Engines and production machines replace human minds; control machines replace human brains. A thermostat thinks, after a fashion. It acts like a man who decides that the room is too cold and puts more coal on the stove. Modern control mechanisms are much better than that. Gathering information from delicate instruments (strain gauges, voltmeters, [illegible] tubes) they act up --and more quickly and accurately than human beings can. They never get sick or drunk or tired. If such mechanisms are properly designed, they make no mistakes.
When combined in tightly cooperating systems, such machines can run a whole manufacturing process, doing the directing as well as the acting, and leave nothing for human operatives to do. Technologically (if not politically), whole automatic factories are just around the corner. Squads of engineers are excitedly designing mechanisms for them."
 . . . [Modern calculators are] "built chiefly of electron tubes which give a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer when stimulated by means of electrical impulses. This is roughly what the neurons (nerve cells) of the human brain do . . . The modern industrial revolution is . . . bound to devalue the human brain at least in its simpler and routine decisions . . . The human being of mediocre attainments or less [will have] nothing to sell that is worth anyone's money to buy."

The binary "'yes' or 'no'" bit suggests an awareness of digital computing, but in another part of the story, Wiener compares insanity in human brains to instability in machines.

(The bridge is bipolar!)

My takeaway from that is that Wiener is not giving up on his analogy between analog computers and human brains. "Cybernetics" is going to go down with the analog computing ship, clearing the way for many cycles of digital computer enthusiasts warning that "artificial intelligence is going to take your jobs."

With Shockley, Bardeenn and Brattain also in the news this month, it's time for another cut at how that came to  happen, and some social commentary on top.

Postblogging Technology, December 1948, II: Transistor Dawn

R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver, Canada

Dear Father:

Not much of a note to cover, as chances is that the streetcar will deliver me in time to feed and tip the courier for you. Don't mind me! I love to play the host in your kitchen, and the boys that Wong Lee chooses for these errands are so sweet and polite! And I honestly can't wait to be in a house, a home, and one that I can think of as belonging to my family, if you will pardon my presumption. With people that I love, anyway. I'll have more to say about that soon, perhaps. Right now, I have only inside rumours that I will be living the student life for three years more. Official word comes down at the end of next month . . . 

Oh! The letter. I've written it anyway, out of a spirit of completeness. Besides, I received the most ridiculous threat the other day at the city archives, where I am following up on some loose ends in regards to the old Oregon scandal. If they do find my body floating in the Bay, at least the world will know my opinion of Jane Russell. (Except that I forgot to give it. Never mind, I don't speak ill of the dead, and every time I see her act . . . )

Also, yes, I know that the streetcar doesn't go past your door, and that your neighbours will look askance at a girl carrying a suitcase down your street, where only taxicabs are meant to go. On the other hand, before they can look askance, they'll have fight their way through their ornamental gardens to the point where they can see the road. Perhaps askanceness will be reported to them from the groundskeeper's men via the butler. 

You'll notice a story below where I try to claim credit for the soon-to-be-Alma Mater (x1) for a quite exciting story (inside word has the "semi-conductor" set bound for a very quick Nobel). Well, yes, Shockley did not go to Stanford, and his colleagues don't even know how to spell "California," but the Shockleys are Stanford people, and it is the Stanford campus where all the scientists and engineers are running around and saying that he deserves a Nobel. So there!  

Yours Sincerely,
Ronnie

In 1948, a twenty-year old house that has just seen the last of its children leave, was built in ---1928!

A Technological Appendix to Postblogging Technology, December 1948, I: An Embarrassment of Riches

I was going to move directly on to the next postblogging installment when my long weekend finally begins on Wednesday (Thursday? I'm  a bit shell-shocked on my eighth working day in a row, especially with a shift from 5am to 4pm starts in the middle. Guess when I did all my writing?), but there's something of an embarrassment of riches in this last installment, and I don't just mean the first publicity press image of a would-be business celebrity photographed in a leather jacket versus three-piece-suit formal wear. It's not quite Brando's borderline fetish outfit , but the times, they are for sure changing.

 (For no particular reason.)

Here's another way that they're changing:

This looks like it is from Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, but I doubt that it is original there, or in Kennedy. It would look even better in a chart, particularly with the German production shooting for the stratosphere in 1938, compared with the all but stagnant British totals. It's just as well that the chart cuts off there. British steel production doubling in a decade would not fit the thesis well. Neither would a generation of stagnant American production, although Germany's climb back to Herman Goering Werke-levels of production by the mid-1950s is a bit more on the nose. It is probably time to talk about productivity and innovation in steel. 

Aside from fashion and steel, this week sees the first glimmerings of the Xerox, and a weird digression into "computers" by the Goodyear Corporation. Arguably, if you were living in 1948, the imminent fall of the Republic of China and an American recession would have been more important at the time, with side order of world(ish) war to follow, culminating, as far as bridging the years go, with the Truman Administration's failed National Emergency in steel. 

But let's go with what we've got.

Postblogging Technology, December 1948, I: Bonnie Prince Charlie

R_. C_.,
The Savoy,
London,
England.

Dear Father:

The Savoy! I'm so jealous! Serves the Oriental Club right for not wanting to put Ma'am up! How did she take her flight, by the way? Not like going up the Coast in a Norseman, I bet!

I'm also more than a little in awe at the way that you propose to attend the Christening and still be back in Vancouver in time for Christmas. Not that I want to discourage you, mind! I'm worked to a lather with exams and Christmas shopping and a special delivery of some as might prefer America to Formosa, and I long, long for the comfort of the old house on Roxborough, where I plan to make up for the short time I shall have to rest this holiday season by resting very, very hard indeed from the 23rd to Christmas Eve, when Reggie is expected, if he hasn't told you, as I know he sometimes doesn't.

I swear that I remind him to write his Mother. 

You asked about Christmas presents. For myself, I leave it to Ma'am, and London, in the hopes that she will have some time. At least, staying at the Savoy means that you can have your shopping sent in, I think. Still? I will be firmer about Reggie, as I've seen something that he absolutely must have, and which I cannot afford. I've slyly mentioned it in the letter, but if your eyes glaze over, it is the most wonderful leather jacket in an almost bomber style, but lighter. Impractical in a Massachusetts winter, I know, but perfect for spring. The catalogues I could find are calling it a "motorcycle" jacket, and I enclose a picture, in case you can get it in London. Otherwise, I imagine it is a mail order item. 

Once again, I find myself bursting with holiday-season gossip that I cannot find time to write down, as the letter has taken up all my time. I shall drop a post immediate, just for the pleasure of addressing the Savoy Hotel, but must now head off to show that I can, in fact, read a French novel. (But, since it is for a graduation credit, I will be proving that I can read it harder.)

Yours Sincerely,
Ronnie.

(Christmas '48 seems to have been quite the year for novelty hits.)

Gathering the Bones, 21: A Whole New World of Salt and Iron

Discourses on Salt and Iron. 

On the one hand, I found it hard to organise myself to postblog about technology last week. On the other, some fairly basic questions about beaver pelts led me to things, even things technologico-historic, that need to be organised and put on the record. Some of it is intriguing and speculative; some of it is hard and fast everyday fact, not given sufficient attention; some of it is just disgusting.

I'll start with a pretty picture, of a housing development across the creek from the Mantle Site (Wendat Historic Village), which is where our photographer is standing.  

By Neufast (talk) - I (Neufast (talk)) created this work entirely by myself., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28721907

Fifty kilometers north of Toronto's downtown, in the Regional Municipality of York, on the "ecologically sensitive" Oak Ridges Moraine, roughly the height of land between Lakes Ontario and Huron (the overland route that gave rise to the city of Toronto), lies the Municipality of Whitcliffe-Stouffville, and, in it, "the Mantle Site."

Occupied between 1500 and 1530, the Mantle Site is the largest known "historic Wendat village." Gary Warrick thinks that it had a large population that represented the culmination of two centuries of endogenous population growth on the one  hand,  and wars of consolidation in the previous century, on the other. I was all set to run with that until I checked out the next linked bit of academic referencing in the Wikipedia page, a review by Peter Ramsden that tells me not to hold my horses. So I will! This ain't serious research, so there's no reason to be building castles in the air. I'll save that for salt, hair, pelts and "digestive enzymes." (Do you know where you got digestive enzymes from in a traditional economy? Come on, guess!)

Source

For us, the most salient aspect of the Mantle Site is the discovery of a ceremoniously buried wrought iron axe with maker's marks from the Basque country. So although such material cultural evidence as we have locates the Mantle Site on an axis from the central New York Iroquoian sites where native silver from the Cobalt River valley has been found, we can derive this celebrated axe from Labrador or the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

For others, the most important issue is ethnic, as signalled by the site name. Stadacona," the village at the modern site of Montreal encountered by Jacques Cartier in 1534, is the source of the word, "Canada," and a place of disputed history. The Stadaconans were clearly Iroquian-speakers, and the Montreal area has two First Nations communities speaking Iroquian languages, the Hurons/ Wendats, and Mohawk/ Kanien'kehá:ka. Both claim to be descended from the people of Stadacona, but as this seems unlikely, and in a spirit of "can't we all just get along?" we speak instead of "St. Lawrence Iroquians." I imagine that the same game could be played with the ancestral Wendat communities of the Oak Ridge Moraine. We know they called themselves Wendats in historical times. It is not clear that they did in the pre-contact period, and given the way that the historic Iroquois integrated numerous formerly distinct Iroquian communities, Warrick's wars of consolidation would presumably have erased numerous local, now lost family, lineage and totem identities.

Presumably.

Gathering the Bones, XX: Salt of the Earth

I hope everyone enjoyed my vacation week as much as I did! I went away with the notion of writing a "Gathering the Bones" installment on the Erie Canal, and came back with an eerie synchronisation to report.