"It is said that I am always in opposition, and that the same spirit of resistance which has often hitherto governed my action has influenced it now ....I have only to say, that this is the same spirit which founded this great Republic, and which is now drawing the commerce of the world to our shores. It was the same spirit which unchained the fetters which legislation ... once fastened upon the Hudson. Repress it if you dare....The share of prosperity which has fallen to my lot is the direct result of unfettered trade and unrestrained competition."
NEW YORK TRIBUNE, March 8, 1855.
Vanderbilt, as a young man, had played a supporting role in the facts that led to the great Supreme Court decision as to steamboats on the Hudson, and the burdening of interstate commerce, GIBBONS v. OGDEN (1824), and that is one of his allusions above.
Showing posts with label steam engines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label steam engines. Show all posts
02 September 2011
16 June 2011
A Coincidence of Wording
John Steele Gordon likes this sentence.
This weekend, in the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal, I read a review of two new books about railroad history. The reviewer, John Steele Gordon, begins thus:
"One technology replaces another only because the new technology is better or cheaper or both." His allusion, in this context, is to the rise of steam engineering as a replacement of the application of muscle power by humans or horses.
Here's a link to that review, though you may need to get a subscription.
Through some random unmotivated googling, I found those same words in another context, in a story published only three weeks before. The website of The American Enterprise Institute ran a story about the death of the old-style printing press and, for that matter, the contemporary dying of dead-tree books.
Here's a link to that one.
I thought I had uncovered a bit of plagiarism until I checked for the author's name at the top of that article on The End of The Book. It was ... John Steele Gordon. He is entitled to re-use his own sentences without quibble from me.
Don't use it too often, though, Mr. Gordon. It's not that great a sentence.
This weekend, in the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal, I read a review of two new books about railroad history. The reviewer, John Steele Gordon, begins thus:
"One technology replaces another only because the new technology is better or cheaper or both." His allusion, in this context, is to the rise of steam engineering as a replacement of the application of muscle power by humans or horses.
Here's a link to that review, though you may need to get a subscription.
Through some random unmotivated googling, I found those same words in another context, in a story published only three weeks before. The website of The American Enterprise Institute ran a story about the death of the old-style printing press and, for that matter, the contemporary dying of dead-tree books.
Here's a link to that one.
I thought I had uncovered a bit of plagiarism until I checked for the author's name at the top of that article on The End of The Book. It was ... John Steele Gordon. He is entitled to re-use his own sentences without quibble from me.
Don't use it too often, though, Mr. Gordon. It's not that great a sentence.
22 April 2010
The Sirius arrives in New York
It was on April 22, 1838, that the Sirius arrived in New York City, after a journey of 18 days and 10 hours, making it the first vessel ever to cross the Atlantic ocean using only steam power.
She had riggings ready, just in case she needed them, since the new technology was not considered reliable. If you follow that link you'll see what she looked like.
This is a bittersweet day, then, because that completed voyage meant that the age of tall wooden ships with great sails was coming to end. Those old tall ships weren't merely a technology for crossing the ocean, thet were an aesthetic, and they remain a touchstone.
The philosopher David Hume once said that beauty arises from utility: we prize in a horse for example those anatomical features that make it swift, and we come to regard them as beautiful. There is truth in this, but it is very incomplete. Beauty may arise from, but long survive, its utility. A horse is still beautiful to us, though none of us any longer relies upon its features for transportation.
The marks of verse, for example -- metre and rhyme -- may once have been quite useful. In a pre-literate age they may have been the reason a poem survived, passed along from the memory of one teller of the tale to that of another, while many a prosaic story, never put into this form, was lost forever. We have writing implements now, though, and many who know how to use them. If we still consider verse a thing of beauty, the reason is that beauty can outlive utility.
Speaking of both poems and ships then: the poem "Sea-Fever" first appeared in print in 1902. This lovely expression of longing for the "windy day with the white clouds flying/ And the flung spray...." was the result of the passage of more than 60 years since the voyage of the Sirius, the voyage that made the windiness of the day an irrelevance to sea travel.
She had riggings ready, just in case she needed them, since the new technology was not considered reliable. If you follow that link you'll see what she looked like.
This is a bittersweet day, then, because that completed voyage meant that the age of tall wooden ships with great sails was coming to end. Those old tall ships weren't merely a technology for crossing the ocean, thet were an aesthetic, and they remain a touchstone.
The philosopher David Hume once said that beauty arises from utility: we prize in a horse for example those anatomical features that make it swift, and we come to regard them as beautiful. There is truth in this, but it is very incomplete. Beauty may arise from, but long survive, its utility. A horse is still beautiful to us, though none of us any longer relies upon its features for transportation.
The marks of verse, for example -- metre and rhyme -- may once have been quite useful. In a pre-literate age they may have been the reason a poem survived, passed along from the memory of one teller of the tale to that of another, while many a prosaic story, never put into this form, was lost forever. We have writing implements now, though, and many who know how to use them. If we still consider verse a thing of beauty, the reason is that beauty can outlive utility.
Speaking of both poems and ships then: the poem "Sea-Fever" first appeared in print in 1902. This lovely expression of longing for the "windy day with the white clouds flying/ And the flung spray...." was the result of the passage of more than 60 years since the voyage of the Sirius, the voyage that made the windiness of the day an irrelevance to sea travel.
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