MD related: Longitude The Movie

[Dave Monroe]

On automata, clocks, what have you, and, in particular, the political
history thereof, see Otto Mayr's Authority, Liberty and Automatic Machinery
in Early Modern Europe.   Other works that might be of particular, and,
esp., literary interest include Daniel Tiffany's brilliantly ecclectic,
brilliantly syncretic Toy Medium: Materialism and Modern Lyric, as well as a
particular favorite of mine, Felicia Miller Frank's The Mechanical Song:
Women, Voice and the Artificial in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative.
Frances Yates' The Rosicrucian Enlightenment touches on the topic as well
(esp. Baroque waterworks), alongside all that "secret history" conspiracy
stuff that Pynchon revels in.  Vaucanson's duck, that chess-playing "robot"
(a variant of which appeared in a Poe storry, as I recall), you name it ...
and that's all of course leading up to the cybernetics (elaborated precisely
in re: antiaircraft artillery, and, later, ballistic guidance), electronics,
whatever of Gravity's Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, not to
mention the automata of V. ...

J L wrote:

> spencer:
> >The new cable movie Longitude ...
>
> Quite a decent adaptation, though I wouldn't want to watch
> it at a single sitting.  It was shown in two parts in the
> UK earlier this year.
>
> Incidentally, Channel 4 recently aired a series on the
> origins of the industrial revolution entitled _The Day The
> World Took Off_.  This is a must-see if you get the chance,
> especially the nice comparison between Harrison's clocks and
> Vaucanson's Duck.  GRGR(31)'s chess-playing 'robot' also
> features ...
>
> JL
>
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