Nineteenth-Century Literature

Later nineteenth-century histories of the steam engine were most often written by practising engineers and scientists. They exhibited the common tendency of practitioners to write Whig history, that is, to interpret past historical actors and actions in modern terms. This genre of literature, then, assimilated Watt to the modern traditions and conceptions of thermodynamics. In its turn this later nineteenth-century literature has left its mark on modern historical writings. 

HISTORICAL ROOTS OF THE MAD SCIENTIST CHEMISTS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE... 

The nineteenth-century literature of various genres and countries is full of both materialistic-atheistic and fiendishly destructive chemistry. From the materialism-atheism genre, I will give but one prominent example from Russia and then a general response from a U.S. chemist. 

In nineteenth-century literature, such chemical ambition to equal the total capacity of divine creation is difficult to find. Instead, the elixir of life and its counterpart, poison, figure prominently in the literature as Godlike means to control life and death. As we have already seen, that is why Alexandre Dumas pere let his Dr. Sturler say Am I not God like God -more God than God since I can retake and give back life, cause death to... 

Schummer, J. 2006, Historical Roots of the this volume as Chapter 2). 

For anyone interested in reading more extensively, a wide selection of the relevant nineteenth-century literature is not usually available, except in the older universities. However, the books by Boyde (1980) and by Teich and Needham (1992) contain many of the key papers translated into English, connected with a commentary. 

Zheleznova (first version, 1910) centres around a mother, Vassa, who tries to keep her family together even at the price of corrupting their moral values. Her behaviour destroys her family and literally cripples her son Pavel, who is deformed he is reminiscent of Osvald in Henrik Ibsen s Ghosts (1881), who suffers from syphilis as a symbolic burden for his mother s hypocrisy and as a result of his father s philandering. This theme ties both Ibsen and Gorky to the naturalist tradition that permeated nineteenth-century literature. 

GEOFFREY SANBORN, Assistant Professor of English, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts is the author of The Sign of the Cannibal Melville and the Making of a Postcolonial Reader (1998). His work on British and American literature has also appeared in the Wordsworth Circle and Nineteenth-Century Literature. 

One of the most important reasons for man s progress in understanding and controlling his environment is his ability to communicate knowledge to the next generation. It isn t necessary for each twentieth century scientist to invent the atomic description of matter. This was invented by John Dalton in the nineteenth century, and Dalton recorded his ideas in the scientific literature together with the observations that led him to the model. By study of this and subsequent literature a modern scientist can appraise the nature of the description, the facts it will explain, and the limitations. He is quickly able to approach the frontiers of knowledge—the frontiers defined by the limitations in our accepted models of the behavior of matter. 

Brush s account can hardly be accused of being unaccompanied by serious historical data and research. He analysed much of the chemical periodical and chemical textbook literature from the latter part of the nineteenth century in America and Britain, and also some of the literature from France and Germany in the same period. Brush came to a conclusion that is apparently straightforwardly pro-predictivist ... 

VI. Uses. During the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the present century, PA was widely used as the main expl charge of projectiles and bombs. This is no longer true, Indeed PA per se is hardly used as an expl. Its current limited expl-related use is primarily in the preparation of Explosive D (Ammonium Picrate) and Lead Picrate. It also finds some use as an intermediate in the manuf of dyes. There is some patent literature on the use of PA as a catalyst for polymerizations. For example, PA is claimed as catalyst in polybutadiene polymerizations (Ref 40), and for the prepn of an isobutylene-5-methyl-1,3,6 hepta-trieie copolymer (Ref 38)... 

Hydrodynamic cavitation, which generates similar effects as the well established acoustic cavitation, has long being known for its detrimental effects and tackled accordingly. Literature dating back to late nineteenth century report the destruction caused by cavitation in speed boats. English navy, in an attempt to make high... 

Scientific studies of detonation phenomena date back to the end of the nineteenth century and persist as an active field of investigation. A wealth of literature has developed over this period consequently, no detailed reference list will be presented. For details and extensive references the reader should refer to books on detonation phenomena [4], Williams book on combustion [5], and the review by Lee [6],... 

Medieval literature has numerous references to pseudoalchemists and satires of alchemy. For example, around 1390 Chaucer satirized the alchemists in The Canon Yeoman s Tale, as did the English Renaissance poet John Lyly in his comedy Gallathea and Samuel Butler (the seventeenth-century English poet, not the nineteenth-century novelist of the same name) in Hudibras. 

The invention of percussion compositions for igniting powders is usually attributed to Forsyth [5]. In 1805 he employed pellets composed of a mixture of potassium chlorate and combustible materials, coated with wax to render them safer to handle, but even so they were still dangerous since the mixture was sensitive to friction. The first ignition caps were invented in the early nineteenth century. In these caps the ignitable composition was enclosed in a casing of brass or copper. This invention cannot be traced with any certainty to any individual. The literature on the subject names several chemists including Bellot and Egg in 1815 [5]. 

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