Charles Babbage’s First Automated Chess Machine on Display in the London Science Museum
Written By Murray Ellison | November 1st, 2017
Literary Historian, Gerald Kennedy writes, “In Poe’s writing career he worked… as a proofreader, editor, reviewer” of newspapers in Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York—the publishing centers of the United States” (64). These venues exposed his imaginative ideas to the largest possible audience available in the country in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Burton R. Pollin commented in 1973 at the Annual Convention of the Poe Society in ...
science
Poe’s Early Schooling and Interest in Science
Written by Murray Ellison
Poe’s early schooling and military training inspire and shape his interest in science. According to Kenneth Silverman, Poe’s secondary education started after his foster parents moved from England to Richmond. In 1821, “Edgar attended the private academy of Joseph H. Clarke,” which served to prepare young gentlemen to obtain “an honorable entrance in any University in the United States.” One of Poe’s classmates wrote a testimonial that he was one of the top students in the class (23). In The Poe Log, Thomas and Jackson list the classes that students typically ...
Poe & Science with Murray Ellison
"M.S. Found in a Bottle:" A Look at Poe's Skepticism of 19th-Century Science, Part II
Murray Ellison | August 31, 2017
By being unobserved, the unnamed narrator of Poe’s, “M.S. Found in a Bottle” is looking at the relics of science on the ship he is standing on as an outsider. He concludes that much of nineteenth-century science is outdated and largely based on theories of misguided scientists like Francis Bacon and Symmes. He describes the ship as having a “severely simple bow and antiquated stern,” that reminds him of “an unaccountable memory of old foreign chronicles and ages ...
Sonnet-to Science: Poe’s Early Ambivalence About 19th-Century Technologies
By the time that Poe started writing professionally, the Industrial Revolution had already introduced many dramatic advancements that affected the lifestyles and culture of the nineteenth-century public. For example, the literacy rate had steadily increased in the United States, and many people were able to understand most articles written in the newspaper. They could also travel to many distant parts of the country by rail and communicate to almost anyone almost instantly via the telegraph. Through the development of the Daguerreotype (an early prototype of photography), family members could ...