Order and Progress opening (by Rosa Menkman)
This is to inform you what you have to undergo. Gentlemen if providing you don’t pull down your meshenes and rise the poor mens wages the maried men give tow and six pence a day a day the singel tow shillings. or we will burn down your barns and you in them this is the last notis
A letter from “Captain Swing” to farmers introducing a new threshing machine, 1830.
From Captain Swing: A Social History of the Great English Agricultural Uprising of 1830, Eric Hobsbawm and George Rudé p208.
Observatori (by Rosa Menkman)
a kind of not-fully-abandoned utopian wish for an appropriate, even benign kind of technology, a machine in the garden humans could live with, lives alongside or lies behind modern neo-Luddism and, more often than not, is the symmetrical flipside to the paranoid suspicions of the neo- Luddites. Many neo-Luddites react to the secrets and lies, the broken promises, of technological progress with the profound disappointment of the brokenhearted.
Shimokitazawa, Tokyo, Japan.
(by Guwashi999)
Train carriage, Florence, Italy.
(by Arianna_M)
The vast concourse of people who had assembled to witness the truimphant arrival of the successful travellers was of the lowest order of mechanics and artisans, among whom great distress and a dangerous spirit of discontent with the Government at that time prevailed. Groans and hisses greeted the carriage, full of influential personages, in which the Duke of Wellington sat. High above the grim and grimy crowd of scowling faces a loom had been erected, at which sat a tattered, starved-looking weaver, evidently set there as a representative man, to protest against this triumph of machinery, and the gain and glory which the wealthy Liverpool and Manchester men were likely to derive from it.
The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, 15 September 1830: Fanny Kemble.
Records of a Girlhood, 1878.
Train yard, Helsinki, Finland
(by Mikko Luntiala)
Some of the directors observed, that they were but trustees for property to an immense amount, that the value of that property might be affected, if the procession did not go on, and thus demonstrate the practicability of locomotive travelling on an extensive scale; and that, though the illustrious duke [of Wellington] and his cortege might not deem it prudent to proceed, it was the duty of the directors to complete the ceremony of opening the road.
Discussion following the death of William Huskisson, run over by George Stephenson’s locomotive engine Rocket during the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, 15 September 1830.
25 September 1830: Mechanics’ Magazine
… the engine having received its supply of water… was set off at its utmost speed, thirty-five miles an hour, swifter than a bird flies (for they tried the experiment with a snipe). You cannot conceive what that sensation of cutting the air was; the motion is as smooth as possible, too. I could either have read or written; and as it was, I stood up, and with my bonnet off ‘drank the air before me.’ The wind, which was strong, or perhaps the force of our thrusting against it, absolutely weighed my eyelids down. When I closed my eyes this sensation of flying was quite delightful, and strange beyond description; yet, strange as it was, I had a perfect sense of security, and not the slightest fear.
Fanny Kemble, letter to a friend
26 August, 1830
Records of a Girlhood, 1878
We are credibly informed that there is a Steam Engine now preparing to run against any mare, horse, or gelding that may be produced at the new October Meeting at Newmarket; the wagers at present are stated to be 10,000 1; the engine is the favourite… its greatest speed will be 20 miles in one hour, and its slowest rate will never be less than 15 miles.
Trevithick’s Portable Steam Engine
8 July 1808, The Times
(by jurvetson)
Leeuwarden, The Netherlands
(by Christiaan Triebert)
Antique submarine — not a drug-running supersub.
(by x-ray delta one)
Like a classic German U-boat, the drug-running submarine uses diesel engines on the surface and battery-powered electric motors when submerged. With a crew of four to six, it has a maximum operational range of 6,800 nautical miles on the surface and can go 10 days without refueling. Packed with 249 lead-acid batteries, the behemoth can also travel silently underwater for up to 18 hours before recharging.
The most valuable feature, though, is the cargo bay, capable of holding up to 9 tons of cocaine — a street value of about $250 million.
Wired’s Jim Popkin reports on the new wave of innovative DIY supersub design coming out of Colombia.
