Untold lives blog

William Ross Ashby (1903-1972), or W. Ross Ashby as he preferred to be called, was a pioneer in cybernetics and systems theory. The term cybernetics is today somewhat devalued because of its overuse, particularly in popular culture – with derivative ideas such as cyberpunk and the ‘Cybermen’ of the science fiction series Dr Who being just two examples – but originally it referred to the science of cybernetics, the science of control and communication, in both animals and machines. As a science cybernetics was conceived as being cross-disciplinary involving elements of Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

Photograph of W Ross Ashby taken 1962, Biological Computing Laboratory, University of Illinois. Copyright the Estate of W. Ross Ashby www.rossashby.info

W. Ross Ashby’s pioneering work in cybernetics began in 1928. While still a student at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London he began keeping a journal of his private interests, including work in advanced mathematics, as a means of relaxation. By 1936, while working at St Andrew’s Mental Hospital as a Pathologist, Bacteriologist and Biochemist, Ashby’s private research, reflecting his fascination with underlying organisation of the nervous system, gradually developed to the point where he conceived of developing a machine that would replicate the adaptive behaviour of the human brain.  Today we would recognise this idea as machine learning.

Image and circuit diagram of the Homeostat taken from Ashby’s lecture slides. (Add MS 89152/40) Copyright the Estate of W. Ross Ashby www.rossashby.info

By 16 March 1948, with assistance from his laboratory assistant, Denis Bannister, Ashby successfully constructed and tested his machine which he called the ‘Homeostat’ the name taken from the word homeostasis, a term used in biology to refer to the control of internal conditions, such as blood temperature, within a living organism. The Homeostat became a minor sensation and was heavily featured in the popular press of the day being described variously as ‘the Robot Brain’ or ‘The Thinking Machine’. A very private man Ashby was somewhat uncomfortable with the attention although he presented the Homeostat at conferences, most famously the ninth Macy Conference on Cybernetics (1952). He also published two books Design for a Brain (1952) and An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956) where he detailed his ideas, including ‘the Law of Requisite Variety’, for both academic and popular audiences.

Throughout the rest of his academic life and into retirement Ross Ashby continued to work on his journal, recording thoughts and ideas, and only stopping in March 1972 just three months before his death. By then his journal stretched to over 7,000 pages spread across 25 volumes.

W. Ross Ashby at the British Library

The British Library collection of W. Ross Ashby’s papers includes notebooks, notes, index cards, slides and offprints and is available to researchers through the British Library Explore Archives and Manuscripts catalogue at Add MS 89153. The estate of W. Ross Ashby also maintains a website The W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive which contains digitised copies of much of this material as well as a biography and photographs. It can be found at www.rossashby.info

An in-depth article on W. Ross Ashby and the Homeostat can be found on the British Library Science Blog

Jonathan Pledge, Curator, Contemporary Archives and Manuscripts, Politics and Public Life

In February 1961 I was a young British geophysicist working on ground water exploration in the mountains of Baluchistan. Madeline was working at the High Commission in a secretarial role.

Much of my time was spent camping near the small town of Las Bela, some 100 miles north-west of Karachi. I lived in a tent with water from a well, no electricity, and it was necessary to return frequently to Karachi for food and other supplies.

Derek Morris in Pakistan - photograph courtesy of author

On the day of the Queen’s Reception, Madeline and I made our way to the State Guest House. We were shepherded under the shamiana with hundreds of other guests. The shamiana was an extensive horizontal canvas supported at intervals by vertical poles – ideal for sunny days but not for rain. As the Queen's convoy arrived the sky was already very black, lightning criss-crossed the sky accompanied by thunder and torrential rain.

Very quickly the horizontal canvas was turned into a series of basins, each basin filled with water. The canvas was soon ripped open and everyone underneath was soaked, and the wives of the Burra Sahibs, who had probably been waiting for many years to meet the Queen, found their mascara running down their faces, and their beautiful dresses and hats ruined.

Reaction to the downpour was interesting. For the important guests the priority was to get to a dry place in the Guest House as quickly as possible.

However, for the experienced campaigners in the crowd the first priority was to turn to the tables laden with drink and to collect a bottle or two of whisky or wine as booty, to be of some comfort in the ensuring chaos.

We found ourselves lining a corridor in the Guest House, then everything went quiet as the Queen and her party started moving along the corridor, presumably on their way to meet the High Commissioners and other important guests. The Queen stopped and turned towards me.

‘And what are you doing in Pakistan?’ the Queen asked me.

I had no better or more accurate answer than to say 'I am looking for water, Ma-mm'.

The Queen's reaction was immediate and appropriate.   With a glance out of the window at the torrential rain, she smiled and said “It does not seem very necessary at the moment!”

Everyone laughed at this exchange. Then all quietened down as the Queen moved away and spoke to Madeline about the collapse of the shamiana.

The Duke of Edinburgh then appeared, and he in turn stopped and turned towards me. Before he could say a word, everyone was laughing aloud. Presumably, it is not often that people start laughing before the Duke has spoken, and rather quizzically he looked around for an explanation. He smiled when told of my exchange with the Queen.

Madeline Morris looking through a surveyor's theodolite - photograph courtesy of author

A few days later I returned to Las Bela to continue my work in the Porali River basin, and later in the mountains, closer to Quetta. The exchange with the Queen is but one of many memorable moments of a year in Pakistan.

Derek Morris
Independent scholar

Related articles

The Queen's visit to Karachi in 1961- the official view

At the end of British Science Week I'm using arguably the British Library's most famous resident as a gateway into some of our manuscript collections. In case you hadn't guessed, I'm talking about Sir Isaac Newton, who died on this day in 1727.

The large statue of Newton, which sits outside the British Library, was made by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi in 1995. Rachel Huddart has written a brilliant blog about the statue here.

Statue of Sir Isaac Newton by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, 1995, in the Piazza of the British Library.

The statue was based on an extremely rare colour print and watercolour of Newton by William Blake which is now in the Tate Gallery. So rare, in fact that only two versions of this print exist.

Newton by William Blake, 1795- circa 1805, colour print, ink and watercolour on paper,  © Tate  N05058 [image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 ]

One of the star items in the manuscripts collection at the British Library is William Blake's notebook which contains drafts of his poems as well as many drawings.

Folio 12 from The notebook of William Blake (The Rossetti Manuscrtipt), c irca 1787 - 1847, pen and black ink with pencil. Add MS 49460.

In folio 12, Blake has written part of the poem 'You don't believe' along the left-hand edge. The poem makes reference to Newton in the second verse:

Reason says 'Miracle': Newton says 'Doubt'.

Here, Blake's belief in miracles can be seen in contrast to what Andrew M. Cooper calls Newton's 'self-excluding observational stance'.

Newton came to London in 1696 to oversee the Royal Mint. The British Library also owns significant material relating to the Mint including account books and diaries.

Detail of a page from the account book of Thomas Simon, chief engraver to the Royal Mint (1660-1665) Add MS 45190.

Newton was also President of the Royal Society between 1703-1727. The British Library has important groups of manuscripts relating to the Society including the Thomas Birch and Hans Sloane Collections.

Volumes from the Birch Collection relating to the Royal Society. Add MS 4300-4323, British Library.

Dr William Croon's account of the weight of a carp, 1663, detail from Add MS 4432, f. 1, Royal Society Papers, Thomas Birch Collection.

The British Library has extensive scientific collections across all departments. Take some time to look at our contemporary pages, browse the Science blog as well as explore the earlier collections in the Manuscripts and Archives catalogue.

Alexandra Ault, Curator, Manuscripts and Archives 1601-1850

Aviation is widely regarded as a major scientific and technological breakthrough but another low-tech invention associated with flying is the parachute.  Made of light, strong materials with a large surface area, the parachute slows the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag or aerodynamic lift. Conceptual images depicting parachutes can be found within an anonymous Italian manuscript from the 1740s, showing a free-hanging man clutching a wooden frame attached to a small canopy. The more famous depiction by Leonardo da Vinci was made a decade later. Similar sketches appear in numerous printed works throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however the first actual descent was not attempted until 1783 by Louis-Sebastien Lenormand in France. Together the Scott and Fitzgerald collections within the philatelic collections chart major milestones in British and Global aviation including early references to parachuting.

Oldest known depiction of a parachute, Add MS 34113, f. 200v, British Library

The first two successful parachute descents made in Britain were conducted by John Hampton; his first attempt being made at Montpelier Gardens in Cheltenham on the evening of 3 October 1838. According to an account published on page four of the Spectator dated 6 October 1838 he made an uneventful descent from 9,000 feet landing safely after thirteen minutes.  The H. Eric Scott collection contains a page from the Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction No. 953, which illustrates Hampton’s second descent by parachute at Crenmorne House, Chelsea the following year on 13 June 1839. These images depict the several phases of his attempt, beginning with his ascent in a basket attached to a closed umbrella like parachute secured by a cord to the hot air balloon. At a certain altitude the umbrella like parachute was opened and detached from the balloon by cutting the cord, allowing the parachute to descend slowly back to earth and touching down safely on the ground, a feat which looks far from comfortable.

Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction No. 953, H. Eric Scott Collection, British Library

Sybil Fitzgerald’s global collection pioneer airmail contains material for India including an interesting sheet printed in November 1837 entitled Monsr. D. Robertson’s Grand and Last Ascension at Calcutta. It contains details for a projected balloon voyage to Europe which sounds bizarre involving the use of balloons shaped like elephants and fish bearing the arms of the East India Company and Queen Victoria which would rise to a height of 12,000 feet (2000 fathoms). Prior to its departure on the winds to Europe, Robertson suggested that a small monkey would descend by parachute. Since nothing else can be found regarding this outlandish proposal it is hoped the monkey had a lucky escape!

Monsr. D. Robertson’s Grand and Last Ascension at Calcutta, November 1837. Sybil Fitzgerald Collection, British Library

The Scott and Fitzgerald collections can be viewed by appointment in the philatelic collections by emailing: [email protected]

Richard Scott Morel
Curator, Philatelic Collections

Sources:
'White, Lynn: Lynn White: The invention of the Parachute', in Technology and Culture, vol. 9, No. 3 (July 1968), pp. 462-467
The British Library, Add MS 34113, f. 200v
The H. Eric Scott Collection, volume 1
The Fitzgerald Collection, India

Dame Anne McLaren (1927–2007) was a developmental biologist who pioneered techniques that led to human in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

McLaren studied Zoology at Oxford and received a DPhil in 1952. In the same year she moved to UCL and began research with her husband Donald Michie into the skeletal development of mice. In 1955 she and Michie moved to the Royal Veterinary College and it was in 1958, while working with John Biggers, that McLaren produced the first litter of mice grown from embryos that had been developed outside the uterus and then transferred to a surrogate mother. This work paved the way for the development of IVF technologies and the birth of the first IVF baby Louise Brown some 20 years later.

Detail from McLaren’s laboratory notebook dated 1955-1959 recording her experiments concerning embryo transplants in mice. (Add MS 83844). Copyright the estate of Anne McLaren.

Detail from Mclaren’s laboratory notebook dated 1968-1976. (Add MS 83854). Copyright the estate of Anne McLaren.

In later years Anne’s career took her from Edinburgh to Cambridge via UCL where she continued her work into fertility and reproduction. As well as undertaking research she was a keen advocate of scientists explaining their work to the population at large and being involved in the formation of public policy. McLaren was a member of the Warnock committee whose advice led to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act of 1990 as well as the establishment of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which regulated in vitro fertilization and the use of human embryos, on which she served for over 10 years.

Selection of lectures dating from 1977-78 including a ‘Lecture to girl’s school near York’ (Add MS 83835). Copyright the estate of Anne McLaren.

The Anne McLaren papers at the British Library consist of letters, notes, notebooks and offprints. There is currently one tranche (Add MS 83830-83981) available to readers through the British Library Explore Archives and Manuscripts catalogue with a second tranche planned for release later in 2016. Additionally one of Anne McLaren’s notebooks containing material from 1953 to 1956 (Add MS 83843) is on long-term display in the British Library’s Treasures Gallery.

Anne McLaren’s scientific publications and books, along with an oral history interview conducted in February 2007, are available to readers via the British Library Explore catalogue.

This post forms part of a series on our Science and Untold Lives blogs highlighting some of the British Library’s science collections as part of British Science Week 2016.

Jonathan Pledge, Curator of Contemporary Archives and Manuscripts, Public and Political Life. 

In honour of British Science Week #BSW16 we are looking at examples of ciphers and codes in manuscripts from the British Library.

Add MS 32253 is part of a series of cipher letters relating to despatches from the English Foreign Office to British ministers at foreign courts 1760-1830. These volumes are a treasure trove of codes, letters and keys. Here is a letter from Secretary of State, Sir Francis Windebank (1582-1646) writing to his son from Paris in 1640 where he touches upon the competition between himself and English Ambassadors in the French court: “I stand telling him plainly that there is so much malice upon me”.

 
Detail of a letter from Sir Francis Windebank  to his son, 1640, Add MS 32257 f. 5v.

The letter begins in plain English but cipher is introduced on the first page. The cipher has been translated on the second page and a key added on the third.

Detail of a letter from Sir Francis Windebank  to his son, 1640, Add MS 32257 f  6v.

There is a delightful letter of 1657 from Richard Lawrence to John Wallis (1616-1703)  in Add MS 32499 which reads: “If you can finde out a key whereby to picke this locke you are able to reade any thinge”.

Detail of a letter from Richard Lawrence to John Wallis. 1657, Add MS 32499.

Another collection containing manuscripts in cipher is the Canning Archive which includes the papers of Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House, George Canning (1770-1827). 

The letter below was sent from Paris in 1807 at the height of Napoleon’s military and political success in Europe, only two months ahead of the French invasion of Portugal, presumably at some risk to the sender. The letter was marked on receipt, probably by one of George Canning’s foreign office secretaries, as ‘Most Secret’. The hidden message has been written in sympathetic, or invisible, ink (blue text) with a second message then over-written in conventional ink. The hidden message has been revealed using a chemical reaction, by brushing on a liquid (apparent by the yellow staining), but messages were also sometimes revealed using heat. Sympathetic ink was used for the transmission of secret intelligence up until the late-19th Century.

Detail of a letter in sympathetic ink from Charles McMahon to George Canning via the Foreign Office, 19 September, 1807 Add MS 89143.

This next letter was written from St. Petersbourg by Stratford Canning, British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and contains a message in cipher written between the lines of a standard letter. The use of cipher for the sending of confidential diplomatic messages was widespread and it seems as if Stratford has used the opportunity to send both a conventional letter with news of diplomatic negotiations along with a coded counterpart containing perhaps a more forthright opinion.

Letter to George Canning from Stratford Canning, 30 March, 1825, Add MS 89143.

Stratford Canning had been sent by George Canning to initiate negotiations between Britain and Russia over the status of the border of Russian America (Alaska) and to seek support for the Greeks in their war of Independence against Turkey. Although his discussions with Tsar Alexander I and his chancellor Count Nesselrode were successful in relation to resolving the border issue, the hoped for bilateral agreement over the status of Greece, outside a planned Europe-wide conference, did not eventuate and Stratford left St. Petersburg during April 1825.

These are just a few examples of some of the exciting manuscripts in code and cipher that are housed in the British Library. More can be searched for and discovered on our online catalogue.

Jonathan Pledge, Curator of Contemporary Archives and Manuscripts, Public and Political Life

Alexandra Ault, Curator of Manuscripts and Archives, 1601-1850

I’m currently making a new theatre production called ‘Calculating Kindness’ based on American evolutionary geneticist George Price (1922-1975) at Camden People’s Theatre, yards from where George lived, worked and died. Hardly known outside evolutionary circles, George’s story illuminates important questions about who we are.

I first stumbled across George in Readers Digest in 2011. Struck by his extraordinary story, I was compelled to find out more. This led me to the British Library where his manuscripts are held, together with  those of his collaborator William Hamilton.

Price was an eccentric American who arrived in London in 1968. He spent weeks going to libraries, until he discovered a paper by evolutionary biologist William Hamilton.  This talked about many things, one of which was that people are genetically predisposed to be kindest to kin. If this were true, George found the idea bleak. Did real selfless kindness exist?

In an attempt to prove this idea wrong, George taught himself evolutionary theory and formulated an equation widely acknowledged as the mathematical explanation for the evolution of altruism. The Price Equation proved Hamilton right and was so extraordinary that University College London gave George an honorary position within eighty minutes of him walking in off the street.

   
‘Calculating Kindness’  - image by kind permission of Undercurrent.

Until now, George had been a militant atheist, but writing the equation had a strange effect on him. George began to calculate the probabilities of coincidences in his life, working out the probability of him being the man to write the equation. The outcome was so remote, George decided the equation was a gift from God and converted to fundamental Christianity overnight.

George then embarked on a radical phase of altruism - helping complete strangers. He gave away everything he had and ended up homeless. In America, George had undergone an operation for thyroid cancer. Now, testing God, he had stopped his thyroid medicine, which can contribute to depression. George was pushing the extremes of survival, living on a pint of milk a day and celebrating his last 15 pence.

A few years later, Price was discovered in a squat having slit his throat. Seven men attended his funeral - five homeless and two of our greatest evolutionary biologists, William Hamilton and John Maynard Smith.

‘Calculating Kindness’ weighs up the question: was Price mentally ill, or consumed by a spiritual desire to disprove his own theory: that man is kindest to his kin?

Whilst reading through the collection George began to come to life for me - with each document I got to know him a little more. I started to understand what preoccupied George and how he thought about things. This invaluable research has formed the bedrock for developing the show. It’s material I keep coming back to, and as my understanding of George’s science improves, so I see new things in his writings.

Laura Farnworth
Artistic Director of Undercurrent

Further reading :
The papers of George R Price and W.D. Hamilton are listed in the British Library catalogue Explore Archives and Manuscripts.

‘Calculating Kindness’ is at Camden People’s Theatre from 29 March – 16 April 2016.

Researching the illicit history of booze in Britain is a tricky business since it’s not often that anyone makes a record of crimes that people got away with. After all, that would be evidence.

So I was overjoyed when I came across a complete manual from c.1800 explaining how to run an inn in the most underhand manner imaginable: The Publican and Spirit Dealers' Daily Companion.  It must have been a popular work - the British Library holds copies of the sixth, seventh and eighth editions - and it can’t have done much good for the quality of the beer served in the period but did offer some fascinating insights into the seedier side of the trade.

The beer wasn’t actually all that bad. Sure, the author provides methods for “fixing” beer which has gone sour or which has a bad head, including adding raw beef. He also give a recipe for putting together all the little bits of beer leftover at the end of the day and making them drinkable again by using toasted bread, eggshells and sand. However compared to his suggestions for spirit keeping that was practically honest.

The Publican and Spirit Dealers' Daily Companion 

he worst part (or the best if you are fascinated by the naughtier side of things like I am) is that The Daily Companion actually provides pages and pages of tables and instructions for accurately measuring the strength, volume and quality of spirits received. It’s exactly the information you would need to ensure you were serving your customers with the very best unadulterated spirits from around the world. But of course that wasn’t why they were provided: they were just to stop any distiller or importer from tricking an inn keeper into taking watered down spirits. The author thought this very important because taking spirits which were already watered down would stop the innkeepers watering them down to maximise their own profits.

The Publican and Spirit Dealers' Daily Companion 

Then there are the spirit recipes. Some are actually quite good, and a bartender making their own fruit liqueurs today would get nothing but respect for the effort, but others are an obvious cheat to keep down costs. There’s a recipe for making “Nassau Brandy” from grain spirit which is an obvious swindle but at least nothing dangerous.

The Publican and Spirit Dealers' Daily Companion 

The gin is dangerous. Gin is properly made in a still by redistilling a spirit with botanicals and today we have very strict labelling laws which require gin to be made this way. But The Daily Companion insists that no one really bothers with that. You don’t need a still to make gin, all you need to make gin is a barrel and a pestle and mortar. No need even to bother with real juniper, it can be easily replaced with a few ounces of highly toxic turpentine.

The Publican and Spirit Dealers' Daily Companion 

A recipe that bad could only be a descendent of the illegal gin made from necessity fifty years earlier, and so it offers a unique insight into the tastes, the smells and the dangers of the Gin Craze.

Ruth Ball
Head Alchemist, Alchemist Dreams

Further reading:

The illicit history of booze in Britain