The Devil in the White City

[bekah]

The Devil in the White City is a pretty good book from what I 
remember.   Larson is able to make architecture interesting . I never 
really did get the point of the mass murderer but they coincided in 
time and place,  the Chicago Fair and   Holmes.   The big and the bad 
of the US of A.  ??    (like the two

There is just an incredible amount of info on the net about the 
Chicago Exposition .  There are postcards and maps and pictures of 
memorabilia and I found it quite fascinating.   Made me want to go 
back and take another history degree just so that I could do the 
disciplined research.  (lol -  sick woman!!!)

That said,  take a look at  Pafnuty Chebyshev' s contribution:

"In 1893 several of his mechanical devices were exhibited at the 
World's Exposition in Chicago, including his invention of a special 
bicycle for women." 
<http://kmoddl.library.cornell.edu/biographies/Chebyshev/index.php>

further info - from that page:
P.  Ya Kochina and R-L Kuk. "An unknown letter of P. L. Chebyshev to 
S. V. Kovalevskaya" (Russian), Voprosy Istor. Estestvoznan. i Tekhn. 
(2) (1983): 162-6.

Kovalevskaya  also "became the first female Correspondent Member of 
St. Petersburg Academy of Science, being elected there on the 
initiative of Pafnuty Chebyshev..." 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Kovalevsky

Were they close?  Did they work together on Kovalevskaya's ideas 
regarding the refraction of light in crystals / Rings of Saturn?

Also, see   "A Nihilist Girl"  by Sofia Kovalevskaya.

Bekah



At 5:32 PM -0700 7/12/06, Dave Monroe wrote:
>From Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City: Murder,
>Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
>(New York: Crown, 2003), "Prologue: Aboard the
>Olympic," pp. 3-7 ...
>
>"Everything about the fair was exotic and, above all,
>immense.  The fair occupied over one square mile and
>filld more than two hundred buildings....  One
>structure, rejected at first as a 'onstrosity,' became
>tyhe fair's emblem, a machine so huge and terrifying
>that it instantly eclipsed the tower of Alexanre
>Eiffel that had so wounded America's pride.  Never
>before had so many of history's brightest lights,
>including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Ssan B.
>Anthony, Jane Addams, Clarence Darrow, George
>Westinghouse, Thomas Edison, Henry Adams, Archduke
>Francis Ferdinand, nikola Tesla, Ignace Paderewski,
>Philip Armour,and Marshall field, gathered in one
>place at one time.  Richard Harding Davis called the
>exposition 'the greatest event in the history of the
>country since the Civil War.'
>    "That something magical had occured in that summer
>of the world's fair was beyond doubt, but darkness too
>had touched the fair....  The rational explanation
>laid balme on the forces if change that during this
>time had convulsed Chicago....
>    "For the supernaturally inclined ...." (pp. 5-6)
>
>http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/devilinthewhitecity/home.html
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
>http://mail.yahoo.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20060713/d434e316/attachment.html>