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July 28, 2009

My Day: Magister Ludi, or From Econ 115 to Tesla to Gernsback to "The Skylark of

Space" to Oliver Wendell Holmes...

My day starts with the fall course: Econ 115, Twentieth Century Economic History. The question is how to teach the

acceleration of global and North Atlantic economic growth around 1870. Before 1870 the capital- and resource-corrected

efficiency of labor in the North Atlantic region looks to have grown by only some 0.4% per year--a pace at which it would

take 180 years for the efficiency of labor to double. America supports real income growth of some 1.0% per year before 1870

Ernst & MorrisSince 1993 Over 15,000 Studies Performedwww.CostSeg.com

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take 180 years for the efficiency of labor to double. America supports real income growth of some 1.0% per year before 1870

only by conquering and expanding across the continent, greatly increasing the stock of natural resources the economy has at

its disposal faster than its population grows.

Then around 1870 the frontier closes: natural resources per capita begin to fall. But real income growth does not fall: it

doubles. Post-1870 real income growth is driven by (a) much faster increases in the efficiency of labor, and (b) capital

deepening made possible by inventions that cheapen old and make possible the production of an entirely new range of

capital goods. And both of these processes are in turn driven by (a) the application of science to technology, and (b) the

scent of profit in the nostrils of financiers and entrepreneurs opened up by the possibility of applying science-based

technologies to make both old goods (i.e., dyestuffs, steel, etc.) and new goods (electric lights, airplanes, etc.).

And I decide that the right way to teach this is to make them wake up by telling them about the life of autism-spectrum

genius inventor Nikola Tesla, known for, according to Wikipedia: the Tesla turbine, teleforce, Tesla's oscillator, Tesla electric

car, the Tesla principle, Tesla's egg of Columbus, Alternating current, Tesla's AC induction motor, the rotating magnetic

field, wireless beamed-power technology, particle-beam weapons, death rays, terrestrial standing waves, the bifilar coil,

telegeodynamics, and electrogravitics; recipient of the Elliott Cresson Medal (1893), the Edison Medal (1916), and the John

Scott Medal (1934).[1]

Tesla then leads me to Tesla's autobiography, My Inventions, published in 1919 in Electrical Experimenter magazine, which

was then edited by... science-fiction genre founder Hugo Gernsback, after whom science fiction's Hugo awards are named,

who later edited Amazing Stories.

And so I found myself at the gym reading not David Wessel's In Fed We Trust nor Thomas Levenson's Newton and the

Counterfeiter nor Gillian Tett's Fool's Gold nor Tyler Cowen's Create Your Own Economy nor Rafael Yglesias's A Happy

Marriage but instead a book I last read when I was twelve: E.E. Smith's The Skylark of Space, written in 1915-1921 and

published in 1928 in Gernsback's Amazing Stories--and then compounding the offense with Spacehounds of IPC.

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Seven things strike me about E.E. Smith and Skylark:

The hero is a chemist--admittedly, a chemist who liberates "intra-atomic energy" through some bizarre catalytic

process and then directs the energy via electromagnetic and other etheric disturbances (weak? strong? whatever

extension to the standard model produces proton decay?), but a chemist.

The villains are big business--"World" Steel--and the effete wealthy financial WASP establishment--"Brookings"[2]

(plus the adversarial Nietzschean chemist-uebermensch).

The adversarial Nietzschean chemist-uebermensch--Marc DuQuesne--will steal, will kill, will kidnap, but he will not lie:

his word is good. Moreover, he will not engage in preemptive violence: he will not kill you on general principles simply

because you might be an obstacle later, because he is always sure that he could deal with you if it were to become

necessary.

A "computer" is not a machine but rather a human job description.

Smith doesn't understand special relativity at all.

The casual genocide--alien women and children (or perhaps I should say "brooders" and "younglings") are

exterminated by the billions without anyone batting an eyelash.

The casual eugenics--evolution as directed toward greater scientific nerdity (but it is a very buff scientific nerdity)[3]

and intelligence, this directed evolution as desired by the First Cause or as the point of it all, and the duty to assist in

the improvement of the species (or perhaps specieses).

And this then led me to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in Buck v. Bell (1927):

Carrie Buck is a feeble-minded white woman who was committed to the State Colony.... She is the daughter of a feeble-

minded mother... and the mother of an illegitimate feeble-minded child.... An Act of Virginia, approved March 20,

1924, recites that the health of the patient and the welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the

sterilization of mental defectives....

The attack is not upon the procedure [i.e., due process] but upon the substantive law.... We have seen more than once

that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those

who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in

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who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in

order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute

degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly

unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting

the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson. v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

Just as young men can be drafted and compelled to give their lives for the health of the state (or is it the volk?) in war, so

feeble-minded women can be drafted and compelled to give their fertility for the improvement of the genome.

Let me say that this is a case where I suspect that a wise Latina justice might have been more able to consider the proper

equities than Justice Holmes was.

And let me say that if we are going to play at genetics and eugenics it should be done not by a literary-intellectual judge but

by a real live professional scientist, like Arianne Emory I:

[A]bsolutely essential... are adequately diverse [human] genepools.... We do not create Thetas because we want cheap

labor. We create Thetas because they are an essential and important part of human alternatives. The ThR-23 hand-eye

coordination, for instance, is exceptional. Their psychset lets them operate very well in environments in which...

geniuses would assuredly fail. They are tough, ser, in ways I find thoroughly admirable, and I recommend you, if you

ever find yourself in a difficult [wilderness] situation... hope your companion is a ThR... who will survive, ser, to

perpetuate his type, even if you do not...[4]

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Unfortunately, I only have half an hour of lecture--1/6 of one week--to talk about Tesla and company this fall--and I now

easily have enough material outlined that I could now lecture for three weeks on science, invention, technology, popular

culture, eugenics, and the idea of progress at the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries. God knows if I will ever teach it or

write it up--or if anybody would be interested if I did...

[1] When Tesla died in 1943, an old man living on charity in the New Yorker Hotel and talking to pigeons, Wikipedia claims

that FBI head J. Edgar Hoover seized his property and turned it over to the government's Alien Property Custodian (despite

the fact that Tesla had been a citizen for 51 yeara) while the FBI searched frantically for a working model of Tesla's death

ray. Six months later Chief Justice Stone of the Supreme Court ruled that Tesla's beamed-power patent of 1897 incidently

invalidated Marconi's later radio patents, and so the U.S. Navy did not have to pay for using Marconi-designed radio

equipment. (Marconi's patent by then had a company, and lawyers. Tesla's patent did not.)

[2] To name your chief villain "Brookings" and have him reside in Washington DC in a book written over 1915-1921--when

Robert S. Brookings is one of the U.S. economy's wartime central planners on the War Industries Board, is Chair of the

Board of Directors of Washington University (St. Louis), and founding the three organizations that are going to become the

Brookings Institution (the Institute for Government Research, the Institute of Economics and the Brookings graduate

school) and is bankrolling Harold Moulton who is drafting legislation to create the Budget Bureau (now OMB)--is perilously

close to libel before the Supreme Court changes the law in New York Times v. Sullivan.

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[3] I.e., the Hero and the Ingenue in Spacehounds of IPC:

"Well, you've seen it, Miss Newton," Stevens said regretfully, as he led her toward the captain's office. "The lower half is

full of heavy stuff—accumulators, machinery, driving projectors, and such junk, so that the center of gravity is below

the center of action of the driving projectors. That makes stable flight possible. It's all more or less like what we've just

seen, and I don't suppose you want to miss the dance—anyway, a lot of people want to dance with you."

"Wouldn't you just as soon show me through the lower half as dance?"

"Rather, lots!"

"So would I. I can dance any time, and I want to see everything. Let's go!"

Down they went, past battery after battery of accumulators; climbing over and around the ever-increasing number of

huge steel girders and bracers; through mazes of heavily insulated wiring and conduits; past mass after mass of

automatic machinery which Stevens explained to his eager listener. They inspected one of the great driving projectors,

which, built rigidly parallel to the axis of the ship and held immovably in place by enormous trusses of steel, revealed

neither to the eye nor to the ear any sign of the terrific force it was exerting. Still lower they went, until the girl had

been shown everything, even down to the bottom ultra-lights and stern braces.

"Tired?" Stevens asked, as the inspection was completed.

"Not very. It's been quite a climb, but I've had a wonderful time."

[...]

"I think it's all perfectly wonderful!" she breathed. "Just think of traveling in comfort through empty space, and of

actually seeing through seamless steel walls, without even a sign of a window! How can such things be possible?"

"I'll have to go pretty well back," he warned, "and any adequate explanation is bound to be fairly deep wading in spots.

How technical can you stand it?"

"I can go down with you middling deep—I took a lot of general science, and physics through advanced mechanics. Of

course, I didn't get into any such highly specialized stuff as sub-electronics or Roeser's Rays, but if you start drowning

me, I'll yell."

"That's fine—you can get the idea all x, with that to go on. Let's sit down here on this girder. Roeser didn't do it all, by

any means, even though he got credit for it—he merely helped the Martians do it. The whole thing started, of course,

when Goddard shot his first rocket to the moon, and was intensified when Roeser so perfected his short waves that

signals were exchanged with Mars—signals that neither side could make any sense out of. Goddard's pupils and

followers made bigger and better rockets, and finally got one that could land safely upon Mars. Roeser, who was a

mighty keen bird, was one of the first voyagers, and he didn't come back—he stayed there, living in a space-suit for

three or four years, and got a brand-new education. Martian science always was hot, you know, but they were

impractical. They were desperately hard up for water and air, and while they had a lot of wonderful ideas and theories,

they couldn't overcome the practical technical difficulties in the way of making their ideas work. Now putting other

peoples' ideas to work was Roeser's long suit—don't think that I'm belittling Roeser at all, either, for he was a brave and

far-sighted man, was no mean scientist, and was certainly one of the best organizers and synchronizers the world has

ever known—and since Martian and Tellurian science complemented each other, so that one filled in the gaps of the

other, it wasn't long until fleets of space-freighters were bringing in air and water from Venus, which had more of both

than she needed or wanted.

"Having done all he could for the Martians and having learned most of the stuff he wanted to know, Roeser came back

to Tellus and organized Interplanetary, with scientists and engineers on all three planets, and set to work to improve the

whole system, for the vessels they used then were dangerous—regular mankillers, in fact. At about this same time

Roeser and the Interplanetary Corporation had a big part in the unification of the world into one nation, so that wars

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Roeser and the Interplanetary Corporation had a big part in the unification of the world into one nation, so that wars

could no longer interfere with progress."

"WITH this introduction I can get down to fundamentals. Molecules are particles of the first order, and vibrations of

the first order include sound, light, heat, electricity, radio, and so on. Second order, atoms—extremely short vibrations,

such as hard X-rays. Third order, electrons and protons, with their accompanying Millikan, or cosmic, rays. Fourth

order, sub-electrons and sub-protons. These, in the material aspect, are supposed to be the particles of the fourth

order, and in the energy aspect they are known as Roeser's Rays. That is, these fourth-order rays and particles seem to

partake of the nature of both energy and matter. Following me?"

"Right behind you," she assured him. She had been listening intently, her wide-spaced brown eyes fastened upon his

face.

"Since these Roeser's Rays, or particles or rays of the fourth order, seem to be both matter and energy, and since the

rays can be converted into what is supposed to be the particles, they have been thought to be the things from which

both electrons and protons were built. Therefore, everybody except Norman Brandon has supposed them the ultimate

units of creation, so that it would be useless to try to go any further...."

"Why, we were taught that they are the ultimate units!" she protested.

"I know you were—but we really don't know anything, except what we have learned empirically, even about our driving

forces. What is called the fourth-order particle is absolutely unknown, since nobody has been able to detect it, to say

nothing of determining its velocity or other properties. It has been assumed to have the velocity of light only because

that hypothesis does not conflict with observational data. I'm going to give you the generally accepted idea, since we

have nothing definite to offer in its place, but I warn you that that idea is very probably wrong. There's a lot of deep

stuff down there hasn't been dug up yet. In fact, Brandon thinks that the product of conversion isn't what we think it is,

at all—that the actual fundamental unit and the primary mechanism of the transformation lie somewhere below the

fourth order, and possibly even below the level of the ether—but we haven't been able to find a point of attack yet that

will let us get in anywhere. However, I'm getting 'way ahead of our subject. To get back to it, energy can be converted

into something that acts like matter through Roeser's Rays, and that is the empirical fact underlying the drive of our

space-ships, as well as that of almost all other vehicles on all three planets. Power is generated by the great waterfalls of

Tellus and Venus—water's mighty scarce on Mars, of course, so most of our plants there use fuel—and is transmitted on

light beams, by means of powerful fields of force to the receptors, wherever they may be. The individual transmitting

fields and receptors are really simply matched-frequency units, each matching the electrical characteristics of some

particular and unique beam of force. This beam is composed of Roeser's Rays, in their energy aspect. It took a long

time to work out this tight-beam transmission of power, but it was fairly simple after they got it."

He took out a voluminous notebook, at the sight of which Nadia smiled.

"A computer might forget to dress, but you'd never catch one without a full magazine pencil and a lot of blank paper,"

he grinned in reply and went on, writing as he talked.

"For any given frequency, f, and phase angle, theta, you integrate, between limits zero and pi divided by two, sine theta

d...."

[4]The implications of the fact that Arianne Emory I is probably lying to some degree when she says that Union "do[es] not

create Thetas because we want cheap labor. We create Thetas because they are an essential and important part of human

alternatives..." is left as an exercise for the reader.

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Smith, of course, in his critique of the Eastern banks, represents the Western big-business view of governance of his time, a view

which was to flower (if one can call it that) in Reaganism and neo-conservatism. There is a line from EE Smith's heros through

Reagan and neo-conservatism, down to, for instance, Sarah Palin, who really wishes she was a Smith heroine, if only she knew it.

Posted by: Randolph | July 28, 2009 at 10:40 PM

"God knows if I will ever teach it or write it up--or if anybody would be interested if I did..."

please...very interested.

Posted by: Nicholas | July 28, 2009 at 10:58 PM

This was really interesting and awesomely syncretic.

Comment on 1870s...

One of the factors that created those large growth rates is because states in various regions of the world lost their monopoly vis a vis

other large entities on pricing labor. Global and ever-present markets (railways and telegraph) was able to direct much latent

energies that were invested around people's lives and local infrastructure into feeding the international capitol structure. Some areas

made back the value of their labor and more, while the growth of many others was...hmmm, uneven since for practical purposes it

was the growth rate in mining whatever you wanted out of that society.

Posted by: shah8 | July 29, 2009 at 01:09 AM

Brad: "Then around 1870 the frontier closes: natural resources per capita begin to fall. But real income growth does not fall: it

doubles. "

The *useable* and *accessable* natural resources per capita would have increased like crazy after 1870, because the railroad building

spree in the last third of the 1800's would have brought 1-2 (or more) million square miles of Western US resources into the actual

economic system of the USA (and world).

A body of ore, a tract of timber, or hundreds of square miles of (potential) wheat-growing fields don't matter that much until bulk

transport in and out is in existance.

Posted by: Barry | July 29, 2009 at 06:37 AM

I'd love to take that course, save for the fact that I am not enrolled and live in another state. Is there any chance that you will post

audio or video of your lectures for Econ 115?

Posted by: Jonathon Duerig | July 29, 2009 at 07:01 AM

"The casual genocide--alien women and children (or perhaps I should say "brooders" and "younglings") are exterminated by the

billions without anyone batting an eyelash."

Vampires Suck: Actually, they don't. And that's the problem. (@Slate)

My Day: Magister Ludi, or From Econ 115 to Tesla to Gernsback to "The Skylark of Space" to Oliver Wendell Holmes...

(@this site)

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billions without anyone batting an eyelash."

No joke. During the 60s Smith wrote Skylark DuQuesne to tie up a few of the (numerous) loose ends in the Skylark series. At the end

of this book Blackie finally gives up trying to kill our heroes. It's about time, one might well say.

Instead, he has a new project in mind. He intends (after stopping by Earth to recruit a crew of a few hundred people as obnoxious as

he is) to set off in his gigantic space battleship for a distant galaxy, where he will create the master race by using the local population

for breeding stock and eliminating anyone who doesn't meet his specifications.

To the news of which our heroes respond by standing on the bridge of their own battleship and waving a fond farewell as DuQuesne

sets off into the interstellar sunset.

I read that ending twice. I didn't believe it the first time.

Posted by: Reader | July 29, 2009 at 07:26 AM

Keep in mind E.E. "doc" Smith was a Ph.D. in Chemistry hence the hero chemists. Loved Lensman just for the completely over the

top escalation. They start with Death Stars and work their way up, crashing tachyonic and antimater planets or black holes into

enemy bases.

On the other hand, the original combat information centers (CIC) in WWII US Navy Ships was derived from the Lensman series. To

quote Wikipedia:

An influence that is inarguable was described in an 11 June 1947 letter to Doc from John W. Campbell (the editor of Astounding

magazine, where much of the Lensman series was originally published). In it, Campbell relayed Captain Cal Lanning's

acknowledgement that he had used Smith's ideas for displaying the battlespace situation (called the "tank" in the stories) in the design

of the United States Navy's ships' Combat Information Centers. "The entire set-up was taken specifically, directly, and consciously

from the Directrix. In your story, you reached the situation the Navy was in — more communication channels than integration

techniques to handle it. You proposed such an integrating technique and proved how advantageous it could be. You, sir, were 100%

right. As the Japanese Navy— not the hypothetical Boskonian fleet— learned at an appalling cost."

You of course should make penance by reading "Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers" by Harry Harrison, a hilarious sendup of all

things Smith.

Posted by: monopole | July 29, 2009 at 09:00 AM

Thxs for telling me about Heinlein's parody.... I usually don't like Heinlein but this sounds appriopriate.

In Smith's defense let me say that oddly enough I found Skylark (& the Lensmen series)remarkably politically correct for the time --

"Doc" Smith clearly believes that Asians, women, and aliens can be absolutely the intellectual equal of the straight white guys. This is

probably most striking in 1915 America's "Skylark" where the Japanese servant and the two women are welcome on the interstellar

voyage. I distinctly remember that Crane called Shiro his friend more than his servant.

Posted by: Diana | July 29, 2009 at 09:38 AM

Truly a wonderful post! I hope that you will write that book, it would be a treasure of early 21st Century scholarship.

A quibble:

In the post you claim that the post - 1870 bending of the labor productivity curve was a result of :

(b) the scent of profit in the nostrils of financiers and entrepreneurs opened up by the possibility of applying science-based

technologies to make both old goods (i.e., dyestuffs, steel, etc.) and new goods (electric lights, airplanes, etc.).

I am currently reading "William Cooper's Town" by Alan Taylor. Based upon that I don't think that there was a deficiency in

entrepreneurial energy prior to 1870. The Jacksonian era saw a similar primacy of entrepreneurship. I think that the closing of the

frontier and the development of the railroad and telegraph networks reduced the profitability of inter-regional arbitrage that had

been the heart of merchant activity. This directed capital into the second industrial revolution industries.

Posted by: John Howard Brown | July 29, 2009 at 10:28 AM

For the non-gamers in the audience, I thought I'd mention that in the 1990s Steve Jackson Games published a Smith estate-

authorized Lensman supplement for the GURPS roleplaying game, which not only summarized the entire series but actually presented

tech timelines, etc., for playing campaigns set at different points in the series. It's pretty nifty (gotta love star-spanning vacuum tube-

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tech timelines, etc., for playing campaigns set at different points in the series. It's pretty nifty (gotta love star-spanning vacuum tube-

based technology)

Posted by: David A. Spitzley | July 29, 2009 at 11:23 AM

What a wonderful train of consciousness. Tesla always was something out of science fiction. He is responsible for our modern vision

of electrical power and all those jacob's ladders on the set in monster movies. He may even have been an inspiration for Doc E.E.

Smith. I always liked Doc Smith. He always had a place for a spunky gal. I actually liked the way he handled special relativity.

Basically, he got the story, got his ship flying faster than light and then announced that Einstein was apparently wrong. If we ever

develop faster than light travel, that will probably be the realistic scenario.

As for Carrie Buck's Daughter, the late Steven J. Gould actually looked up her report card:

Vivian Buck was adopted by the Dobbs family, who had raised (but later sent away) her mother, Carrie. As Vivian Alice Elaine Dobbs,

she attended the Venable Public Elementary School of Charlottesville for four terms, from September 1930 until May 1932, a month

before her death. She was a perfectly normal, quite average student, neither particularly outstanding nor much troubled. In those

days before grade inflation, when C mean "good, 81-87" (as defined on her report card) rather than barely scraping by, Vivian Dobbs

received A's and B's for deportment and C's for all academic subjects but mathematics (which was always difficult for her, and where

she scored D) during her first term in Grade 1A, from September 1930 to January 1931. She improved during her second term in 1B,

meriting an A in deportment, C in mathematics, and B in all other academic subjects; she was on the honor roll in April 1931.

Promoted to 2A, she had trouble during the fall term of 1931, failing mathematics and spelling but receiving A in deportment, B in

reading, and C in writing and English. She was "retained in 2A" for the next term--or "left back" as we used to say, and scarcely a

sign of imbecility as I remember all my buddies who suffered a similar fate. In any case, she again did well in her final term, with B in

deportment, reading, and spelling, and C in writing, English, and mathematics during her last month in school. This offspring of

"lewd and immoral" women excelled in deportment and performed adequately, although not brilliantly, in her academic subjects.

In short, she was a B student, now and then on the honor roll, not the usual definition of "imbecile".

Posted by: Kaleberg | July 29, 2009 at 07:17 PM

"You of course should make penance by reading "Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers" by Harry Harrison, a hilarious sendup of all

things Smith."

Ha. Scandalous piece of false advertising. They got through the entire book without smashing a single star.

""Doc" Smith clearly believes that Asians, women, and aliens can be absolutely the intellectual equal of the straight white guys."

That's not what I think. Asians and women, yes. But the role of the aliens was to either supply villains to massacre or to gaze

worshipfully at the awesome humans.

Posted by: Jack | July 29, 2009 at 08:22 PM

"You of course should make penance by reading "Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers" by Harry Harrison, a hilarious sendup of all

things Smith."

I second this recommendation -- my second favorite Harry Harrison novel (behind "Bill The Galactic Hero").

Posted by: NickS | July 30, 2009 at 01:40 PM

I took Econ 115 from Martha Olney at UC Berkeley in 2000, and that class remains the source of almost all my ideas about

economics. At that time, it covered the entire economic history of the country from the early republican period (the period that I

chose eventually to focus on as a History major) to the present. It was a great class, and I'm sure that Brad will do a great job of

leading it.

Posted by: Bill in Albany | August 05, 2009 at 01:09 AM

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8/5/09 10:32 PMMy Day: Magister Ludi, or From Econ 115 to Tesla to Gernsback to "The Skylark of Space" to Oliver Wendell Holmes...

Page 11 of 11http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/07/my-day-magister-ludi-or-from-…to-gernsback-to-the-skylark-of-space-to-oliver-wendell-holmes.html

Me: Economists:

Paul Krugman

Mark Thoma

Cowen and

Tabarrok

Chinn and

Hamilton

Brad Setser

Juicebox Mafia:

Ezra Klein

Matthew Yglesias

Spencer

Ackerman

Dana Goldstein

Dan Froomkin

Moral

Philosophers:

Hilzoy and

Friends

Crooked Timber

of Humanity

Mark Kleiman and

Friends

Eric Rauchway

and Friends

John Holbo and

Friends

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