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bhgross144.bsky.social
Ben Gross
@bhgross144.bsky.social
4.4K followers 2K following 2.5K posts
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.
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bhgross144.bsky.social
"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
bhgross144.bsky.social
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 🗃️📜📚🎭
[Poster for Hamlet starring Richard Burton], 1964. Hoblitzelle Interstate Theatre Circuit Collection, Flat File 11.01 Folder 4. Harry Ransom Center University of Texas at Austin
December 4, 2025 at 2:44 AM
bhgross144.bsky.social
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 🗃️📜
Post Ben Gross ‪@bhgross144.bsky.social‬ Happy #AlicesDay! On the 1st Saturday in July, the city of #Oxford commemorates the "golden afternoon" where #LewisCarroll was inspired to write about Alice's adventures in #Wonderland. (If you're in #Austin, you can celebrate by visiting @ransomcenter.bsky.social !) #WordsAndWonder #booksky 🗃️📜📚 ALT ALT ALT ALT Jul 5, 2025, 2:04 PM 4 reposts 20 likes Home Explore Notifications Chat Feeds Lists Saved Profile Settings Following Discover Popular With Friends History Science & Techno HistSTM GLAMS What's History 🗃️ HSS 2023 SHOT 2023 ⚙️ Astronomy Gift Links/Gift Articles More feeds Trending Hakeem Jeffries Spotify Wrapped New Orleans Roger Marshall Pete Hegseth Notre Dame Feedback • Privacy • Terms • Help Screenplay by Joseph L. Mankiewicz with illustrations by William Cameron Menzies for Alice in Wonderland (ca. 1933) Inkjet reproduction of title page from the original Byron W. and Susan Sewell Collection of Lewis Carroll Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
December 3, 2025 at 8:08 PM
bhgross144.bsky.social
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
Screenshot from Ken Burns American Revolution. The caption reads “Several dozen were hauled away to Simsbury, Connecticut.” The narrator continues: “and imprisoned in an abandoned copper mine seventy feet below the Earth that the Patriots called the ‘catacomb of loyalty.’”
December 3, 2025 at 3:18 AM
bhgross144.bsky.social
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 🗃️📜
First edition of Lest Darkness Fall (1939) First edition of The Ancient Engineers (1963) First edition of The Incomplete Enchanter (1941) First edition of The Great Monkey Trial (1968)
November 27, 2025 at 4:12 PM
bhgross144.bsky.social
The final sale prices for those #MuppetChristmasCarol busts.

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

#Muppets
Apparently purchasing an Aristotle, Moliere, or Shakespeare bust from The Muppet Christmas Carol would cost $19,200. Dante, meanwhile, only sold for $16,000.
November 26, 2025 at 2:02 PM
bhgross144.bsky.social
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
bhgross144.bsky.social
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 📚📽️
Top: Author busts in the Harry Ransom Center's lobby (Jean Cocteau, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, James Joyce, Edith Sitwell) Bottom: Author busts from a Muppet Christmas Carol (Aristotle, Dante, Moliere, Shakespeare)
November 25, 2025 at 2:33 PM
bhgross144.bsky.social
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 🗃️📜
Henry Moseley in the Balliol-Trinity College Laboratories, soon after his graduation. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Moseley#/media/File:BigMoseleyCard.jpg)
November 23, 2025 at 8:13 PM
bhgross144.bsky.social
"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 🗃️📜
Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963), Oil and acrylic on canvas, 1961, 43 1/2 x 55 inches. © Trustees of the Feliks Topolski Estate. More information here: https://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine/2006/11/01/selections-from-feliks-topolski-portraits-of-britains-twentieth-century-literary-greats/ Cover sheet of a bound and corrected typescript of Brave New World Aldous Huxley Collection Harry Ransom Center University of Texas at Austin Finding aid: https://research.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=00378
November 22, 2025 at 5:21 PM
bhgross144.bsky.social
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 🗃️📜
1. Sketchbook, 1964-1971. Billy Collins Papers, Box 23, Folder 1. 3. Typescript and handwritten notes, draft, and quotations for inaugural reading as Poet Laureate, 2001. Billy Collins Papers, Box 24, Folder 18.
November 21, 2025 at 7:06 PM
bhgross144.bsky.social
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
bhgross144.bsky.social
“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 🗃️📜
Cover of “A Rant About Technology” But the word is consistently misused to mean only the enormously complex and specialised technologies of the past few decades, supported by massive exploitation both of natural and human resources. This is not an acceptable use of the word. “Technology” and “hi tech” are not synonymous, and a technology that isn't “hi,” isn’t necessarily '“low” in any meaningful sense. Technology is the active human interface with the material world.
November 20, 2025 at 1:03 AM
bhgross144.bsky.social
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
It’s like there’s a comedian loose in an archive… The name is Whatever. Mister Whatever.
November 19, 2025 at 2:11 AM
bhgross144.bsky.social
"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
Panel 1 Calvin: So long, Pop! I'm off to check my tiger trap. Panel 2 Calvin: I rigged a tuna fish sandwich yesterday, so I'm sure to have a tiger by now! Panel 3 Calvin's Dad: They like tuna fish, huh? Calvin: Tigers will do anything for a tuna fish sandwich! Panel 4 Hobbes (inverted): We're kind of stupid that way.
November 18, 2025 at 7:52 PM
bhgross144.bsky.social
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
The front cover of the October 2025 issue of IEEE Spectrum ("The Scale Issue")
November 17, 2025 at 5:19 PM
bhgross144.bsky.social
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
bhgross144.bsky.social
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
bhgross144.bsky.social
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
bhgross144.bsky.social
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
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/running-for-office/index.php?page=26
November 16, 2025 at 5:17 PM
bhgross144.bsky.social
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
bhgross144.bsky.social
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
bhgross144.bsky.social
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
bhgross144.bsky.social
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
bhgross144.bsky.social
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