Alonzo Meatman

[Dave Monroe]

Meatman, Alonzo R.
405; (first appearance misspelled "Meattman"); sold
Zoot the time machine; 410; 412; lycopodium type, 413;

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=M

>From Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New:
Thinking about Electric Communication in the Late
Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford UP, 1988), Ch. 5,
"Annihilating Space, Time and Difference: Experiments
in Cultural Homogenization," pp. 191-231 ...

   "The most admired feats of the telephone, cinema,
electric light photograph, amnd wireless were their
wonderful abilities to extend messages effortlessly
and instantaneously across time and space ....  But
wherever these extraordinarily sensitive new nerve
nets extended, there was little genuine sense of
cultural enconuter and exchange....  Those who
controled the new electrical technologies not
infrequently dismissed vastly different cultures as
deficient by civilized standardsm lacking even the
capacity for meaningful communication." (p. 191)

"An early prophet of transoceanic telegraphic
communication, Alonzo Jackman, offered a more explicit
cultural vision of the salvation of the world through
instantaneous long-disance communication in a 'new
era' of ecvanglism.  'Heathenism would be entombed,
and the whole earth would be illuminated with the
glorious light of Christianity.'" (p. 192)

Citing ...

Alonzo Jackman, letter to the editor of the Woodstock
(Vermont) Mercury,  Aug. 14, 1846, in "Some of the
Early History of Telegraph Cable Manufacture,"
Electrical Review, Nov. 23, 1889, p. 2 (p. 259, n. 2)

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/?view=usa&ci=0195063414

Alonzo Jackman

In a letter to the Vermont Mercury in August 1846,
American academic, engineer and soldier Alonzo Jackman
claimed that through the advent of a Transatlantic
Telegraph between England and America, ‘all the
inhabitants of the earth would be brought into one
intellectual neighborhood.’ ...

http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/training_skills/publications_resources/summaries_brochures/linking_thinking.htm

Gen. Alonzo JACKMAN, LL. D., was born in Thetford,
Vt., March 20, 1809. He was the son of Joseph and
Sarah (WARNER) JACKMAN. Alonzo's father, a worthy
farmer, died when he was only three years old, and
left his mother in destitute circumstances with three
small boys, Enoch, Alonzo, and Joseph. Young JACKMAN's
early life was spent in hard labor for his support,
and with but little opportunity for schooling. In
1820, at the tender age of eleven years, he and one
brother left home never to return again, with this
parting admonition from their mother: "Go for
yourselves and remember there is a God." She had
married Eli CLARK in 1816. At the age of twenty-one
Alonzo received from his employer the munificent sum
of $4, and two days' provisions for six years' hard
labor. The contract with his employer was that he
should have three months each year at school, which he
received only in part. He passed the next three or
four years at labor, with an occasional term at
school. About December 1, 1833, he entered Franklin
Seminary, at Norwich, with the determination of
pursuing a regular course of study. While he was
pursuing his own studies in the academies lie taught
mathematics, his favorite branch, to pay his way.
Norwich University had been opened in 1834, and in
December, 1835, he entered the senior class of that
institution, and graduated with the degree of A. B. in
August, 1836. He was the only graduate that year, and
the first from that institution. Soon after he
accepted the chair of mathematics in the "N. U.," and
remained in connection with the university, with the
exception of two periods of about three years each,
until his death, February 24, 1879. He wrote and
published an article on the subject of a submarine
oceanic magnetic telegraph, in which he gave detailed
plans for the construction and the method of laying
the cable across the Atlantic. The same year (1846)
Hon. Amos KENDALL, president of a telegraph company at
Washington, D. C., communicated through a Philadelphia
paper the difficulties of crossing large bodies of
water with a telegraph. Mr. JACKMAN wrote Mr. KENDALL
how all difficulties could be surmounted, and sent the
article to periodicals in Washington, Philadelphia,
New York, and Boston, but the editors refused to
publish it as too visionary. He procured its
publication in the Vermont Mercury, of Woodstock, Vt.,
in the number issued August 14, 1846. He sent copies
of this number to scientists and prominent men in the
United States, Canada, England, and France. Thus he
secured the credit to himself of being the originator
of the plan of this gigantic and beneficent
enterprise.

      Prof. JACKMAN was an excellent tactician and
drill-master, and was appointed by the governor of New
Hampshire brigade drill-master with the rank of major,
and drilled the officers of the militia of that state
in 1847 and '48. In 1857 the cadets of Norwich
University were organized as an infantry company under
the malitia law, and Prof. JACKMAN was commissioned
captain. In 1859 he was commissioned colonel of the
Second Regiment, and the next year the Vermont militia
were consolidated into one brigade and he was its
brigadier-general. At the beginning of the late war
Gov. FAIRBANKS summoned him, with Generals BAXTER and
DAVIS, to St. Johnsbury, for consultation. The
Governor offered Gen. JACKMAN any position in his
power to grant if he wished to go to the front, but
wished him to remain and prepare others for duty. In
this field he was untiring. He prepared and got the
old militia in readiness, organized new regiments and
sent out cadets to drill new companies in all parts of
the state, and gave clear, precise, and thorough
instruction to officers. Honor is therefore due the
General for the good results for the state and Union.

http://www.rootsweb.com/~vermont/WashingtonNorthfield.html

The splendid service of Norwich University at this
crucial period, as well as that of General Alonzo
Jackman (one of the first graduates of the school and
at this time occupying the chair of military science,
mathematics, and civil engineering in that
institution), deserves commendation.

At the breaking out of the Civil War, General Jackman
was brigadier-general of the State militia; and he was
now offered the command of the first regiment of
volunteers....

http://vermontcivilwar.org/1904history.php

Norwich University moved to Northfield from Norwich,
Vermont in 1866 when the South Barracks at the older
location burnt down. Jackman Hall was the first
building to be constructed at the new site. The
building was erected in 1868, and named Jackman Hall
in 1907 to honor General Alonzo Jackman, a graduate of
1836 and a faculty member. It served as housing for
cadets.

http://www.norwich.edu/about/map/ncinfo1c.html

Discovered in a box of discarded books being sold at a
church rummage sale in Montpelier, a Bible belonging
to Brigadier General Alonzo Jackman has made its way
back to Norwich. The University's first graduate and
later a member of the faculty, Jackman is an indelible
part of Norwich history....

http://www.norwich.edu/about/news/2005/bible.html

Alonzo Jackman, librarian and professor of civil
engineering, military tactics, mathematics, and
natural philosophy at Norwich University, Vermont,
wrote an unpublished and undated manuscript in the
1870s entitled 'A Novel Telescope'.  This paper was
intended for the Norwich U. 'Reville' campus
newspaper.  Jackman describes a shallow vessel or
cistern of mercury, with a diameter of twenty feet,
spun at a uniform velocity by 'suitable machinery' to
produce a parabolodial surface.  The central portion
of the mercury vessel was replaced by an elevating
'contrivance' with an observer's chair that could be
carried to the focus of the optical surface.  This
focal point could be adjusted by altering the speed of
revolution of the vessel....

http://www.europa.com/~telscope/LMT.txt

Jackman, Alonzo A Treatise on The Doctrine of
Numerical Series, both Ascending and Descending: Also
the Binomial Theorem, with Integer and Fractional
Exponents.
Claremont, NH, Published by the Author, 1846. first
edition, octavo, 55, [1] pp., original stiff printed
wrappers, some minor erosion on spine, some spotting,
otherwise a very good clean copy. The author could as
well have titled the work "Practical Algebra." The
author was appointed as instructor of mathematics at
Norwich University of Vermont in 1836, and appointed
professor of mathematics there in 1837, he resigned
his position in 1846. American Imprints 46-3670, five
locations.

http://search.abaa.org/dbp2/book61629897.html

"Sam Fleischmann" - "Meatman" or maybe "Fleshman" ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0303&msg=77296

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0408&msg=92511

Cf. ...

   "For Case, who'd lived for the bodiless exultation
of cyberspace, it was the Fall. In the bars he'd
frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance
involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The
body was MEAT. Case fell into the prison of his own
flesh."

[...]

   "Seven days and he'd JACK in. If he closed his eyes
  now, he'd see the matrix."

http://www.lib.ru/GIBSON/neuromancer.txt

Emphases added.  But do see as well ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112550

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