UPDATE # 2: A scholarly analysis of the cat piano

I finally found an academic article that discusses the cat piano! Micheal John Gorman, director of the Science Gallery, contextualizes the cat piano within the Baroque culture of machines and the early-modern obsession with torturing cats (that's right, cat torture was a bit of a craze). Apparently the cat piano is believed to have been invented by the Jesuit polymath Althanasius Kircher (no surprise to anyone remotely familiar with this guy). Schott and Kircher were both interested, among many other things, in the strange, exotic, and wondrous side of nature. Gorman's article focuses on the spectacular array of marvelous machines (for e.g. the water-vomiting two-headed Imperial Eagle machine) that Kircher displayed in his Musaeum Kircherianum (part of the Collegio Romano) and the space they occupied between legitimate and illicit magic. The cat piano, however, seems to have been more of a playful early-modern joke (despite the um... animal cruelty aspect). Gorman cites another study that treats the cat piano, Instruments and the Imagination, which I have yet to check out. I guess that means stay tuned for another installment on my bizarre fascination with this oddity!

Update #3: Video of a modern cat piano for Prince Charles!

History of Science Society annual meeting, November 3-6 in Cleveland

The History of Science Society (HSS) has announced that registration for the annual meeting and housing is now open:

http://www.hssonline.org/Meeting/index.html

Travel grants are also available to grad students, independent scholars, and recent PhDs, so be sure to avail yourself of the support out there!

Several of us are planning on driving together to Cleveland, which is just a day's drive, so consider joining us if you'd like to make the conference more affordable.  The HSS annual meeting is a great opportunity to get connected with colleagues and get your research interests out there -- it's also a relatively low pressure opportunity to present, so keep it in mind for future papers.

UPDATE: Cat piano!

I recently posted about an image of what appeared to be an early-modern musical instrument that harnessed the vocal stylings of live animals. I had found the image in Gaspar Schott's 1657 Magia universalis at Memorial Library's Special Collections. I am still working on my Latin, so I was unclear whether or not this was actually a musical instrument. Turns out it was! The more popular form of which was the "cat organ" or "cat piano." In fact, this musical instrument has its own wikipedia page. As always, the truth is stranger than fiction.

The blogosphere is alive with the sound of HSMT

Many thanks to Darwin blogger Michael Barton, who has posted an impressive list of blogs and twitter feeds related to the history of science, medicine, and technology:

http://thedispersalofdarwin.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/hos_blogs/

Enjoy!

Animal Keyboard from 1657

Remember those toy keyboards that would play animal sounds instead of musical notes? I remember being particularly fond of the MOO key on mine. Turns out the animal-sound-keyboard was not an invention of the 1980s, but is much more ancient in origin. Perhaps, first invented by the Jesuit polymath Gaspar Schott in 1657:

Clearly that's what's going on here, right? :)

We exist!

I was recently at a party attended mainly by grad students in the Sociology department. One party-goer revealed that she had a secret crush on a student outside of Sociology and a mutual friend of ours quickly began listing off names of departments in an attempt to narrow down the identity of the crushee. But, when he exuberantly called out “History of Science,” the girl laughed and replied “No, name some real departments!”

We are, indeed, a real department (the oldest and in U.S., even), but as any grad student currently working on their PhD in the HoS knows, many people have never heard of the department or discipline. I often get asked if I do “more history or science” when I tell people what I'm getting my doctorate in. How to remedy this? Probably with a cool t-shirt:

I mean, did anyone know what NASA was before this came out:

Probably not.
Ok. I really just want to make a cool t-shirt to commemorate my time here. But, this might raise awareness of the department around campus... maybe. The question is: what to put on it? A graphic representing Galileo's velocity experiment will no longer do since the Sci Rev isn't as central to our discipline. I do think we could create a design that would appeal to everyone. I'm willing to look through Special Collections for cool images, but this might just generate a list of of quirky images that Meridith likes. So, I'm hoping we can collectively come-up with a list of ideas for designs. I'm reasonably good at illustration and volunteer to draw something up if you have an idea, but neither the time nor inclination to sketch it.

Rides to Cleveland for HSS

Several of us are already making plans to be at the History of Science Society annual meeting in Cleveland, November 3-6. If you haven't been to HSS, it's a friendly, mostly non-intimidating conference, and you'll meet some really great scholars who will be only too happy to talk with you about their research. We're going to have at least one car-load, and perhaps more than one, driving there to save money, so save the dates and plan to join us in Cleveland!

For more information about History of Science Society and the annual meeting, go to the HSS homepage.

Allons-y!

Welcome to Wisconsin HSMT's new graduate student blog. We hope that this forum can be an informal, fun, and respectful venue for us to share our brainstorms, announcements, updates, and resources. Please feel free to contact Scott Prinster if you have suggestions about how this page might be an even better resource.