Ben Gross
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bhgross144.bsky.social
Ben Gross
@bhgross144.bsky.social
John Merritt Associate Director for Research Services at the Harry Ransom Center; Author of The TVs of Tomorrow-How RCA's Flat-Screen Dreams Led to the First LCDs (Chicago 2018). Posting in a personal capacity.
"What is it that defines a monster? What, exactly, makes something or someone so monstrous?

Find out the answers to these ?s tonight @ 7 PM, CST when @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social discusses her latest book @ a webinar hosted by the Linda Hall Library.

events.lindahall.org/humansamonst... #histSTM
December 4, 2025 at 6:47 PM
This 1964 poster reminds us that there's nothing quite like watching a #Shakespeare play through the miracle of ⚡ELECTRONOVISION ⚡!

Visit @ransomcenter.bsky.social's IG feed for more #Hamlet materials from our collection: www.instagram.com/p/DRzqcDNDEe...

#theater #drama #booksky 🗃️📜📚🎭
December 4, 2025 at 2:44 AM
Trying to remember if we had Alice-related music on display @ransomcenter.bsky.social during our #WordsAndWonder exhibition...

(We definitely had at least one screenplay...)

www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/...

#AliceInWonderland #ThroughTheLookingGlass
#filmsky #booksky 🗃️📜
December 3, 2025 at 8:08 PM
Finally found time to watch @kenlburns.bsky.social’s #AmericanRevolution.

Nobody told me that the town where I grew up was referenced in Episode 3!

( #Simsbury was the site of an abandoned mine that served as a prison for captured Loyalists: revolutionarywarjournal.com/simsbury-min...) #CTHistory
December 3, 2025 at 3:18 AM
L. Sprague de Camp, influential #scifi & #fantasy author who occasionally delved into #histSTM, was born on #OnThisDay in 1907.

Researchers can consult De Camp’s papers @ransomcenter.bsky.social: https://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/guides/DetectiveFantasyandScienceFiction #booksky #histsci 🗃️📜
November 27, 2025 at 4:12 PM
The final sale prices for those #MuppetChristmasCarol busts.

(I'm not sure why Dante sold for less than the other three authors.)

#Muppets
November 26, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Imagining an alternate history where Splinter named the #TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles after major literary figures...

(Aristotle leads,
Dante does machines.
Moliere is cool but rude.
William Shakespeare is a party dude.)

#TMNT #TurtlePower
November 25, 2025 at 3:26 PM
The Jim Henson Company's 70th Anniversary Auction is today. If I had the funds, I would love to expand @ransomcenter.bsky.social's collection of author busts by purchasing these props from The Muppet Christmas Carol.

www.juliensauctions.com/en/auctions/...

#Muppets #JimHenson #booksky #filmsky 📚📽️
November 25, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Henry Moseley, the English physicist whose X-ray spectroscopy experiments led to a reorganization of the #PeriodicTable, was born #OnThisDay in 1887. He later died in the Battle of Gallipoli.

More via @sciencehistory.org: www.sciencehistory.org/stories/maga...

#histSTM #physics #chemistry #WWI 🗃️📜
November 23, 2025 at 8:13 PM
"Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly--they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced."

Aldous Huxley, author of #BraveNewWorld, died #OnThisDay in 1963. His passing was overshadowed by JFK's assassination.

(Images HT @ransomcenter.bsky.social; info in alt-text) #booksky 🗃️📜
November 22, 2025 at 5:21 PM
Yesterday, @ransomcenter.bsky.social hosted a reading by former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins. We also launched a new teaching guide inspired by digitized material from Collins's personal archive.

Check it out here: www.hrc.utexas.edu/teaching/bil...

#poetry #booksky #speccolls 🗃️📜
November 21, 2025 at 7:06 PM
Billy Collins sharing some of the poems from his new canine-themed anthology.

(@ransomcenter.bsky.social has been the home of Collins’s archive since 2014: norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/fin...)

#booksky #poetry
#DogShow #archives 🗃️🐶
November 21, 2025 at 2:40 AM
“That’s the neat thing about technologies. They’re what we can learn to do.”

This letterpress edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s “A Rant About #Technology” exceeded all my expectations. Thanks to @skeuomorphpress.org for making it available during their summer fundraising drive! #STS #scifi #booksky 🗃️📜
November 20, 2025 at 1:03 AM
Look who visited @ransomcenter.bsky.social while I was attending #HSS2025 in New Orleans.

(And contrary to what he told @texasstandard.bsky.social, he didn’t have to break in…)

Thanks for stopping by, @mulaney.bsky.social!

#comedy #LiveFromNewYork #SNL
November 19, 2025 at 2:11 AM
"So long, Pop! I'm off to check my tiger trap!"

The very first #CalvinAndHobbes strip was published forty years ago today (Nov. 18, 1985).

#comics #OnThisDay
November 18, 2025 at 7:52 PM
A little disappointed that neither raisins nor rice were referenced in @spectrum.ieee.org's special issue on scale!

spectrum.ieee.org/magazine/202...

#metrology #measurement
#electronics #innovation
November 17, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Our final speaker, Monique Laney, is an immigration historian who describes the contested nature of scientific mobility after WWII.

Her paper focuses on the National Academy of Sciences's involvement in the Hungarian Crisis of 1956. Unusual since scientists were refugees from Eastern bloc #HSS2025
November 16, 2025 at 5:56 PM
Mihailescu: It requires resources to align purposes. Can't just put physicists & engineers in a room and expect collaboration.

The smaller scale of Swiss research infrastructure & close institutional alignment b/w Institute of Physics, Observatory, etc. made such reorientation easier. #HSS2025
November 16, 2025 at 5:46 PM
Our next speaker, Ian Mihailescu is discussing the development of atomic clocks at the Neuchatel Observatory.

While American atomic clocks emerged from the massive growth of national security funding (cf. Forman), the situation was different in Switzerland. #HSS2025 #physics
November 16, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Perillan: This project originally focused on Einstein, but has pivoted to Wallace. Wallace saw himself as an agro-scientist. Though often presented as a failed dreamer or flip-flopper as seen in this cartoon, he framed himself as a scientist--open to changing his mind based on new evidence. #HSS2025
November 16, 2025 at 5:17 PM
This particular petition card (#202797) bears the signatures of Albert Einstein & Henry Wallace. The two men had, along w/Du Bois, been active in various international peace movements after WWII.

But why is the card at Vassar? And why aren't Einstein & Wallace listed as signatories...? #HSS2025
November 16, 2025 at 5:14 PM
For my final (!) panel of #HSS2025, I've relocated to Oak Alley for a panel on #ColdWar Convergences of Time & Space.

Our first speaker, Jose Perillan, is discussing the Stockholm Appeal petition card in Vassar's Morris & Adele Bergreen Einstein collection: vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/collections-...
November 16, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Piorko now shifts to an analysis of a 3rd text: Botanologia, an English herbal by physician William Salmon published in 1710.

Villanova's copy of the book is filled w/a wide variety of specimens corresponding to its entries, including plants from the New World (e.g. South Carolina) #HSS2025 #botany
November 16, 2025 at 4:03 PM
Some of you may be wondering whether AI/LLMs could facilitate the analysis of alchemical texts.

Lang notes one potential use: analyzing early modern recipe books & extracting lists of ingredients--but emphasizes the need for human proofreading. (It can save some labor but often adds more!) #HSS2025
November 16, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Lang has colleagues who attempted to reproduce the recipes in Processus Universalis. The chemists then grouped similar recipe variants based on their experiments.

Interestingly, their findings aligned w/stylometric analysis (see below), a quantitative technique to analyze literary style #HSS2025
November 16, 2025 at 3:44 PM