A REVIEW OF SCIENTIFIC RECREATION LITERATURE 

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©Bob Friedhoffer, 2002

  “Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind.

Therefore, do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement.”

Plato, The Republic, Book VII, Paragraph 536

 

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The Pneumatics of Hero of Alexandria.......................................................................................................................... 2

Natural Magick............................................................................................................................................................... 3

The Mysteryes of Nature and Art.................................................................................................................................... 4

Mathematical Magic....................................................................................................................................................... 6

Rational Recreations........................................................................................................................................................7

The Boy’s Playbook of Science........................................................................................................................................ 8

The Playbook of Metals....................................................................................................................................................8

Cyclopaedic Science Simplified...................................................................................................................................... 8

Gale’s Cabinet of Knowledge........................................................................................................................................ 8

Magic, Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions........................................................................................................... 9

Popular Scientific Recreations.......................................................................................................................................10

 

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            Modern culture is such that the education process must compete with television, popular music, sports activities, Internet activities, computer games, magazines, the mall (shopping and cruising), peer pressure for cultural assimilation, and other attention catchers.  There are those who believe that one way in which to introduce a love of science as well as a visceral understanding of the principles in youngsters, is by presenting science as an entertainment. 

Many natural philosophers and scientists (including those of eminence and those long forgotten and/or never known by the general public) got their first taste of the “wonders of science” through the readings to be found in the canon of Scientific Recreations.  Cabinets of curiosity are included in the field in general but fall outside of this paper’s purview. The mission of this paper is to present a rather broad overview of the literature of the field.  The books included in this paper were written not for the scientists of the day, but for the literate public in general, as both informational guides and how-to books. 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines recreational mathematics as "mathematics studied or indulged in for pleasure or amusement".  If we exchange the word mathematics with the word science we would have "science studied or indulged in for pleasure or amusement".  With that definition in mind, we can say that a scientific recreation is the playful use of scientific ideas.  This play may be for education, entertainment or even research by amateur scientists.  The sciences (as we know them today) have a long history of being disseminated as entertainment, rather than facts that must be learned to progress in a career. 

            Scientific recreation’s history stretches from the modern era back to some of the earliest of the Greek writers when litigation was not part of the publishing equation.

            The first books of scientific recreations in the Western World, of which we are aware, were written circa 100 AD.  The author was Hero, sometimes called Heron, of Alexandria Egypt.   The manuscripts were part of the great library of Alexandria that was started by the royal "Ptolemy" family.  Among the fields that he wrote upon were optics, mechanics, automata and pneumatics.

                As far as is known, the only work of his that has ever been translated from the ancient Greek is the book known today as "The Pneumatics of Hero of Alexandria"[1].  This tome included a number of magic tricks; all based on scientific principles, some of them still used by magicians today.   Included in the scientific discussions was a treatise on air and vacuums.  Some of the scientific curiosities considered were items such as the world’s first steam turbine known as the aeoleopile, self-opening temple doors, and alarm horns that sounded when a temple door was manually opened. A number of useful, everyday objects were also described in the book.  There were a varied descriptions of siphons, including self starting siphons, the world’s first vending machine, a hand pumped fire engine much as might have been seen in 19^th century America, and a syringe much like the ones that a doctor might use today.  In his introduction, Hero stated that he was not the inventor of the bulk of the contrivances explained in the book, but hat he was merely a compiler.    That statement makes one wonder how old the material truly is.  Though many in the field give attribution of their work as does Hero, it must be noted that a greater number did not.  As will be seen in the examination of other books, material was frequently appropriated with little to no reference or homage to the originators.

                Another important early book is "MAGIAE NATURALIS” or Natural Magick[2] as it is known in the English speaking world, by Giovanni Baptista della Porta, which was first published in 1558. It originally consisted of four chapbooks that investigated the secrets of nature.  After writing the first edition he kept on investigating the secrets of nature and kept on writing, eventually ending up with 20 books.  There are some wonderful explanations of scientific phenomena in the tome, but we are not sure if the book is intended as a warning to the public at large or a how-to book for con men and women.  The first English translation

(Transcribed from 1658 English Edition, Printed for Thomas Young and Samuel Speed, at the Three Pigeons, and at the Angel in St Paul's Church-yard)

gives us instructions on scams including such juicy items as:

 "How to alter and transform Tin, that it may become Silver"  

  (4^th book)

 "Of Counterfeiting Glorious Stones."

(6^th book)

 "How to counterfeit infirmities."

"To make a Man out of his senses for a day."

(8^th book)

 “Among the ornaments of women, this is the chief, to have after childbearing, round, small, solid, and not flagging or wrinkled breasts. So we may, Hinder the augmenting of the breasts."

"How to correct the ill scent of the Armpits."

(9^th book)

 
“…to know how to open letters, that are sealed with the General's Seal, and signed with his name. To know what is contained within, and to seal them again. Writing others that are contrary to them, and the like. I will show how,  "To counterfeit the Seal."

(16^th book)

 One of the less than scrupulous must be Book 20 "The Chaos"

 Chapter VI is entitled, "How by some impostures we may augment weight." 

This chapter includes:

"To augment the weight of Oil."

"Increase the quantity of Honey."

"Augment Soap."

"Increase the Weight of Wheat."

Chapter VIII discusses magicians in a most flattering manner.

“Now will I open cheats and impostors, whereby Jugglers and impostors, who fain themselves to be Conjurers, and thereby delude fools, knaves, and simple women. I, to cast down their fraud, by admonishing simple people not to be deceived by them…”

 

According to the author of Isaac Newton’s biographer, Richard S. Westfall, in the book Never At Rest, Isaac Newton not only read The Mysteryes of Nature and Art[3] by John Bate, a book on scientific recreations, but also actually built some of the apparatus therein.
           Include in the first chapter of the Bate's tome, “The Firste Book”, are many of the items to be found in Hero’s book, as well

as ‘advanced’ pneumatic devices which though based upon Hero’s work ‘improves’ upon it.  Included are things such as a number of

weather glasses (barometers) and various clepsydra (water clocks).  The next chapter, “The Second Booke”, is devoted to “Fire-workes”

that includes: sky rockets, “A receipt of a composition that will burne, and feed upon the water” and other “…Fireworkes, that operate

upon the earth.”  Chapter 3 (The Third Booke) is devoted to “Drawing, Limming Colouring, Painting and Graving”.  Included are methods

of duplicating existing pictures, “How to take the perfect draught of any printed or painted picture”, the creation of paints of specific color

such as “a good yellow”, a “velvet-blacke”, and “to write a gold colour”.  The fourth book is called “The Booke Of Extravagants” and

includes many experiments and demonstrations of natural magic, household hints, and other oddities.  The first item in this chapter is, “How

to make a light burne under the water, being a very pretty conceypt to take fish.”  This is a clever method of providing illumination

underwater by having a candle inside of a glass globe that is weighted to float just beneath the surface of the water (buoyancy).  In addition

to the clever flotation device, Bate also demonstrates how to increase the power of the candle’s illumination by use of pieces of looking

glass (mirrors as reflectors).

           Some of the other items on this chapter (echoing della Porta) include, “To Make Iron Have The Colour of Brass”, and conversely 

To Make Copper Or Brasse Have The Colour Of Silver”, the making of invisible ink, solder, glues and many medicaments for ailments 

such as “An Oyntment For The Shingles…And Ringworm”, “Oyle To Heale Any Burne Or Scalde” and a treatment “For The Byte Of A 

Mad Dogge”. 

Many of the items in Bate book seem to have been printed in other tomes, including della Porta’s, but at least to his credit, if no credit was given, at the very least he chose items from diverse sources and rewrote them for his reading public, which probably had little resource to the originals.

            Isaac Newton’s mentor at Trinity College, Cambridge was the author of a number of works of scientific interest.  One of the books is entitled “The Discovery of a New World; or a Discourse tending to prove, that there may be another Habitable World in the Moon, With a discourse of a Possibility of the Passage thither.”[4] This book is purported to be the first non-fiction book on space travel.  Wilkins, a polymath, was also the author of a book on ciphers and secret codes.  This was first published in London in 1641 under the unlikely title of, Mercury: or, the Secret and Swift Messenger.  Shewing how a man may with Privacy and Speed communicate his Thoughts to a Friend at any Distance. The final book by Wilkins, examined by this paper is, Mathematical Magic; or, The Wonders that may be performed by Mechanical Geometry[5].

The dedication of this book to “His Highness The Prince Elector Palatin” includes the following excerpted line.  “  …which I did the rather at such times make choice of, as being for the pleasure of it more for recreation, and for the facility, more suitable to my abilities and leisure.”   This fascinating work discusses among other things, the balance scale and the simple machines; “the leaver” (lever), wheel, pulley, wedge (inclined plane), and the screw.  The machines’ various beginnings (Greek – primarily Archimedes) and idea of mechanical advantage are examined and explained at length.  Chapter XIV is entitled  “...concerning the infinite strength of Wheels, Pullies and Screws…to perform the greatest labour with the least power.”   It goes on to discuss the ways in which forces may multiplied many times through the clever use of wheels and pulleys, and pinion gears of different diameters and pitch.  Wilkins pays tribute throughout the book to the Greek innovators who used these machines for quotidian purposes as well as warfare, including weapons such as the Ballista and multiple arrow thrower.

     Rational Recreations[6], In which the Principles of Numbers and Natural Philosophy are clearly elucidated by a series of Easy Entertaining, Interesting Experiments, is a four volume tour de force that contains a plethora of interesting items.  This compendium ranges across the field of scientific recreations including but not limited to; self propelled carriages, magic lanterns, optical phenomena with mirrors and lenses, experiments in electricity referring to the works of Benjamin Franklin and Priestly’s use of batteries to perform chemical experimentation, magic squares and magic tricks based upon mathematical and scientific principles.  Hooper had the decency to credit originators when known

            John Henry Pepper, a co-inventor of a stage illusion called “Pepper’s Ghost”, based upon partial reflection of plate glass (the principle later discussed at length as quantum theory by Richard Feynman in QED), was also the author of a number of  books on scientific recreations.  They include The Boy’s Playbook of Science[7], The Playbook of Metals[8]  and Cyclopaedic Science Simplified[9].

The Playbook of Metals The first chapter devotes itself to a discussion of, the elements in general, the flora and fauna to be found within mines, geological eras, etc. Within the chapter is a section devoted to one, M. A. Snider, who wrote about the Earth’s surface as originally being of one mass and then separating into the continents as we know them today  (La Creation at ses Mysteres devoiles) predating Wegener’s theory of Continental Drift (1915).   There is an individual chapter devoted to each element.  Each element’s properties, uses, history and possible experiments are discussed within each chapter.

The Playbook of Science and Cyclopaedic Science Simplified are general courses in what we would now call Physics, with a smattering of chemistry included.  Chapter subject matter includes: properties of matter, centrifugal force, center of gravity, specific gravity, cohesion, adhesion, magnetism, electricity and light.

           

Moving on to the early 19^th century, we will find Gale’s Cabinet of Knowledge [10], which is a compendium of material, seemingly lifted from many sources.  Included in this book of 363 pages with added plates are moral essays, scientific experiments and explanations (natural philosophy) and many magic tricks.  Much of the material is arranged in a hodge-podge, mixing natural philosophy, magic and morality with seemingly little reason.  Pages 166-167 for example offers, “To Find A Number Thought Of By Another”, “A Curious And Agreeable Wager, Of Which You Are Sure Of Winning”, “Method Melting Steel And To See It Liquify”, “To Pull Off Any Persons Shirt Without Undressing Him, Or Having Occasion For A Confederate.”

The French offered many books in the field.  Three of the better-known authors are Ozanam (1708)[11], Gaston Tissandier (1884)[12], and the pseudynomic TomTit (1890-1893)[13].  All of these authors’s works were important enough to be translated into English.  Many of the experiments are demonstrations explained by these authors are still used in classrooms to this very day.  The TomTit series was and still is frequently reprinted (in full and partially) up through modern times.  The first authorized edition of TomTit in the English language is Entitled Magical Experiments or Science in Play.  It was partially reprinted/retranslated in the 1970’s by one Edi Lanners as The Columbus Egg Experiment and Secrets of 123 Classic Science Tricks & Experiments printed by various publishers in both the U.S. and Germany. 

The illustrator for the original series was Poyet, the same illustrator whose work frequently graced the pages of Scientific American.

Albert Hopkins wrote the oft-reprinted book, Magic, Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions[14].  Contained within the covers are experiments and explanations of recreational science as used for both private and public performance. Items included were cutting edge for the day including: walking on a ceiling (suction cups and/or electromagnets) ala a human fly, the creative methods of stage lighting for theatre and opera, sound effects for public performance (creation of thunder and rainfall sounds for example), trick photography techniques, etc.

The title Popular Scientific Recreations was employed by Professor A. M. Low, D.Sc. writing in the first half of the twentieth century (ca. 1920). The dust jacket’s blurb on the back cover says it all.  “The Book Every Boy and Girl will Want.  In this book I have tried to show that Science is no dull affair of equations, calculations and formulae, but a fascinating subject that attempts to explain the world about us and that enables us better to understand its meaning and beauty.”

Throughout the twentieth century, magazine articles were published teaching science as stunts gags aand magic tricks to the amateur.  Magazines of note were/still are: Scientific American, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Science and Mechanics, Boy’s Life (Boy Scouts of America magazine)

The latter part of the twentieth century found many authors writing on scientific recreations, such as Kenneth Swezey, Martin Gardner and Don Herbert.

 This field seems so ripe for exploitation both pedagogical and capitalistic. In addition to teachers who use the existing works, authors still write and many game/toy inventors have jumped into the fray, A. C. Gilbert came out with his lone of Erector Set line, Gilbert Chemistry Set line, Gilbert’s Glass Blowing Kits.  Chemcraft entered the science toy field during the 1950’s.  Educational Design had a large line of scientific toys and games from the 1980’s through 2000, until their toy/game line was purchased and still manufactured by James Industries, the owners of Slinky™ toys, another scientific toy.  The Wild Goose Company also has a line of scientific toys and games that can be found on the shelves of many toy stores today.  Klutz Books has recently developed a hybrid book/set of science related toys allying with San Francisco’s Exploratorium.