Card Catalog

This is pleasing: The first library card catalogs were made using playing cards. During the French Revolution the government created a new system of public libraries, and in order to inventory the books they created the “French Cataloging Code of 1791,” in which bibliographic data was written on playing cards, which were sturdy, uniform, and plentiful. A photo is here.

In The Card Catalog, its affectionate tribute to this now outmoded tool, the Library of Congress notes that 1.2 million cards representing more than 3 million volumes were recorded using this system within 3 years. “Although the ambitious cataloging project did not result in the formation of a national catalog, it did demonstrate the potential of utilizing a uniform format.” (Also: “Deuces and aces were reserved for the longest titles, as those cards had the most space on which to write.”)

Harmony

The Treaty of Versailles contained an odd provision: It established a standard pitch to which orchestras could tune. For hundreds of years the agreed pitch might vary widely from one region to the next. When it became clear that the average pitch was rising over time, a French commission settled that the standard pitch for the A above middle C would be 435 hertz, and an 1885 convention of European nations adopted that as an international standard. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 ratified that decision.

It would change again with time and technology. In the 20th century American musicians came to prefer 440 hertz, and that came to be adopted as the new standard. Today the standard tuning frequency is set by the International Organization for Standardization: ISO 16 “specifies the frequency for the note A in the treble stave and shall be 440 hertz.”

March 7, 2022March 6, 2022 | Art · History

The National Razor

Last words at the guillotine, collected by Daniel Gerould in Guillotine: Its Legend and Lore (1992):

The Comte de Sillery, who was lame, had trouble climbing the steps. When executioner Charles-Henri Sanson told him to hurry, he said, “Can’t you wait a minute? After all, it is I who am going to die. You have plenty of time.”
As he neared the scaffold, someone suggested to astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly that he put on a coat. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Are you afraid I might catch cold?”
A man named Vigié sang the “Marseillaise” at the top of his lungs as he ascended the steps and continued until the blade fell.
When an assistant moved to remove his boots, Philippe Égalité suggested, “They’ll be much easier to remove afterward.”
The Duc de Châtelet attempted suicide by cutting his veins with a piece of broken glass and had to be carried to the tumbril. When Sanson offered to dress his wounds, he said, “Don’t bother, I will be losing the rest of it just now.”
Journalist Jean-Louis Carra told the executioner, “It annoys me to die. I should have liked to see what follows.”
General Baron de Biron was executed on the last day of the year. He said, “I will soon arrive in the next world — just in time to wish all my friends there a happy new year!”
Chrétien Malesherbes asked leave to finish winding his watch before Sanson began his duties.
When the executioner told Giuseppe Fieschi to put on his coat to keep from shivering, he said, “I shall be a lot colder when they bury me.”
Georges Danton told the executioner, “Show my head to the people. It’s worth looking at!”

Catching sight of the statue of liberty opposite the scaffold, Madame Roland cried, “Oh, Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!”

March 6, 2022March 5, 2022 | Death · History

The Beard Tax

In his efforts to reform Russian society, Peter the Great once resorted to banning beards. To bring Russian society more in line with Western Europe, in 1698 he began to charge a fee for the privilege of wearing whiskers, ranging from 100 rubles a year for wealthy merchants down to 1 kopek for a peasant entering a city. Police were empowered to shave scofflaws forcibly.

If you paid your tax you were given a “beard token” with a Russian eagle on one side and a beard on the other. One coin bore the legend THE BEARD IS A SUPERFLUOUS BURDEN.

Because Russians generally resented the law, the tokens are quite valuable now. As early as 1845 collector Walter Hawkins wrote, “The national aversion to the origin of this token probably caused their destruction or dispersion, after they had served their purpose for the year, as they are now very rarely to be met with even in Russia.”

March 4, 2022March 3, 2022 | History · Society

Short-Timers

Pedro Lascuráin served as president of Mexico for less than one hour. The country’s 1857 constitution dictated that the line of succession to the presidency ran through the vice president, the attorney general, the foreign minister, and the interior minister. On Feb. 19, 1913, general Victoriano Huerta overthrew President Francisco Madero as well as his vice president and attorney general. To give his coup some appearance of legitimacy, he had foreign minister Lascuráin assume the presidency, appoint him interior minister, then resign. Lascuráin’s presidency is the shortest in world history.

Charles Brandon was Duke of Suffolk for one hour in 1551. He inherited the title when his elder brother Henry died of sweating sickness, then succumbed himself to the same disease, giving him the shortest tenure of a British peer.

Louis X of France died while his wife was pregnant, so that their son, John I, was born onto the throne. That makes him the youngest king in French history and the only person to have been king of France since birth. He lived only five days, so he’s also the only person to have held the French throne throughout his life. He’s remembered as “John the Posthumous.”

March 1, 2022February 28, 2022 | History

The Poverty Map

When H.M. Hyndman claimed that 25 percent of Londoners lived in abject poverty, Charles Booth was skeptical. So he organized his own investigation. His findings, published as Life and Labour of the People in 1889, showed that fully 35 percent of residents in the East End were poor.

In the map above, the red areas are “middle class, well-to-do,” light blue areas are “poor, 18s to 21s a week for a moderate family,” dark blue areas are “very poor, casual, chronic want,” and black areas are the “lowest class … occasional labourers, street sellers, loafers, criminals and semi-criminals.” (More of Booth’s maps can be seen here.)

A second volume, covering the rest of London, was published in 1891, and a third, in 17 volumes, appeared in 1902. He pressed for many reforms, but he remained optimistic. “What is needed is more vigorous life in every direction: social, educational, industrial, political and religious,” he concluded. “If they be evidences of vigour, pleasure seeking and extravagance need not be condemned, nor even some excess be dreaded. We may confidently trust in the balance of forces; a running stream is always wholesome; a stagnant pool, the danger.”

February 28, 2022February 27, 2022 | History · Society

A Modest Proposal

On March 28, 1912, bacteriologist Almroth Wright wrote a letter to the London Times arguing that women should be denied the vote and in fact kept away from politics altogether in light of their psychological shortcomings. Two days later the Times printed this response. It was signed “One of the Doomed” but in fact had been penned by 26-year-old Clementine Churchill, wife of Winston:

March 30th, 1912

To the Editor of The Times.

Sir,

After reading Sir Almroth Wright’s able and weighty exposition of women as he knows them the question seems no longer to be ‘Should women have votes?’ but ‘Ought women not to be abolished altogether?’

I have been so much impressed by Sir Almroth Wright’s disquisition, backed as it is by so much scientific and personal experience, that I have come to the conclusion that women should be put a stop to.

We learn from him that in their youth they are unbalanced, that from time to time they suffer from unreasonableness and hypersensitiveness, and that their presence is distracting and irritating to men in their daily lives and pursuits. If they take up a profession, the indelicacy of their minds makes them undesirable partners for their male colleagues. Later on in life they are subject to grave and long-continued mental disorders, and, if not quite insane, many of them have to be shut up.

Now this being so, how much happier and better would the world not be if only it could be purged of women? It is here that we look to the great scientists. Is the case really hopeless? Women no doubt have had their uses in the past, else how could this detestable tribe have been tolerated till now? But is it quite certain that they will be indispensable in the future? Cannot science give us some assurance, or at least some ground of hope, that we are on the eve of the greatest discovery of all — i.e., how to maintain a race of males by purely scientific means?

And may we not look to Sir Almroth Wright to crown his many achievements by delivering mankind from the parasitic, demented, and immoral species which has infested the world for so long?

Yours obediently,

C.S.C.
(‘One of the Doomed’)

February 22, 2022February 21, 2022 | History · Society

First Things First

During World War I, Ernest Rutherford worked tirelessly on a secret project to detect submarines by sonar. But on one occasion he did decline to attend a committee meeting.

“I have been engaged in experiments which suggest that the atom can be artificially disintegrated,” he wrote. “If it is true it is of far greater importance than a war.”

February 18, 2022February 17, 2022 | History · Science & Math

An Overlooked Death

Late one night in 2001, Polish immigrant Henryk Siwiak set out to find a Pathmark supermarket in Brooklyn in order to start a new job. Around 11:40 p.m., residents in the area heard an argument followed by gunshots. Siwiak was found dead face down in Decatur Street, shot in the lung. A trail of blood showed that he had staggered there from Albany Avenue seeking help.

Unfortunately, this happened on September 11, the day of the terrorist attacks. Siwiak spoke poor English and was wearing camouflage clothing, which may have led his assailant to think he was associated with the attacks. In any case, with the city in chaos, police could not attend as closely to the case as they otherwise would have, and that day’s news coverage was devoted to the attacks, which may have prevented residents with potentially useful information from coming forward.

The case remains unsolved. “I’m afraid this is forever,” Henryk’s widow Ewa told the New York Times in 2011. Because the terror victims were not included in the city’s crime statistics, Siwiak’s death is the only homicide recorded in New York City on that day.

February 17, 2022February 16, 2022 | Crime · History

The “Dicta Boelcke”

Principles of aerial combat devised by World War I German flying ace Oswald Boelcke, the “father of air fighting tactics”:

Try to secure advantages before attacking. If possible, keep the sun behind you.
Always carry through an attack when you have started it.
Fire only at close range and only when your opponent is properly in your sights.
Always keep your eyes on your opponent, and never let yourself be deceived by ruses.
In any form of attack it is essential to assail your opponent from behind.
If your opponent dives on you, do not try to avoid his onslaught, but fly to meet it.
When over the enemy’s lines, never forget your own line of retreat.
For the Staffel [fighter squadrons]: Attack on principle in groups of four or six. When the fight breaks up into a series of single combats, take care that several do not go for one opponent.

“He certainly didn’t love war and he personally disliked killing,” writes Dan Hampton in Lords of the Sky, his history of fighter pilots and air combat. “It was not a sport to him, as it was with others, nor was it a game. It was something he had to do, so he did it well.” When he died in a crash, his British enemies dropped a wreath behind German lines with the message “To the memory of Captain Boelcke, our brave and chivalrous opponent. From the English Royal Flying Corps.” French, Italian, and British pilots sent wreaths and messages from prisoner-of-war camps, and Manfred von Richthofen said of his mentor, “I am only a fighting airman, but Boelcke was a hero.”

February 15, 2022February 14, 2022 | History