The Pinball Effect by James Burke

The Pinball Effect is something of a prequel to The Knowledge Web. The book at hand was published just a few years earlier and shows James Burke jumping onto the Internet bandwagon as an early adopter. Both books co-opt the hyperlink but instead of underlined text you click on, you get numbers in the margins which direct you to different pages. The idea here is that, as Burke says in the introduction, “We all live on the great, dynamic web of change” and so a scientific discovery doesn't lead to a single technological advance or change in outlook, but to many. And the story of these multiple advances and changes can better be told by giving readers various jumping off points to follow strands in the web than a purely linear narrative which can only lead the reader along a predetermined path. The medium is the message, in a way.

By way of example, in the first chapter we learn about the German hairdresser Charles Nessler who invented the perm. He was able to do so because of the bounty of borax coming from California. (More than gold could be mined in California, but we'll get to that anon.) Burke digresses a bit to introduce the reader to “one of history's great con men, Johann Sutter” who established a settlement near what is now Sacramento. On 28 January 1848 James Marshall breathlessly made his way to the misnamed Fort Sutter with a yellow rock that turned out to be an ingot of gold and he, along with Sutter himself, kicked off the California gold rush. At this point some numbers appear in the margin which takes you to another chapter which delves into the Michigan pinery and the great demand for railroad ties. There was a rush to get trains out west as everyone wanted to go to California to strike it rich in gold.

I first saw Burke's The Day the Universe Changed back in the early 1980s and have been a fan ever since. After seeing his TV shows and reading some of his books, certain discoveries pop up constantly and The Pinball Effect is no exception. All of these ties and the telegraph poles that followed the railroad needed to be replaced frequently and the solution was devised by a group of people that, judging by the fact that Burke returns to them in many of his works, had a profound impact on the course of human events: 19th century German chemists. No tale from Burke is complete without them distilling coal tar. (The other item without which no Burke tale is complete is the Jacquard loom which eventually gave us the computer.) For the purposes of this line of the story, these guys come up with creosote which, when applied to wood, greatly lengthened the lifespan of railroad ties and telegraph poles. From here readers can jump ahead to another chapter noting how English chemist William Perkin synthesized dyes from coal tar which researchers noticed clung to bacteria. A German named Paul Ehrlich took this and ran with it. In the process, he invented bacteriology.

The Pinball Effect is an enormously fun read. I enjoy the meandering history of the origins of things I take for granted everyday and how a number of discoveries came together to produce them. Burke writes well for the layreader. He gives just enough background so that discoveries have context and, in doing so, keeps the narrative moving and focused. He's like the Howard Hawks of the history of science in this way. There are no asides, just the multitude of directions knowledge takes us. Burke's is the only voice so absent are modern day scientists looking back on their discipline. Plus his droll sense of humor made me laugh on occasion.

My only complaint is that I wish there were more pictures and that they were interspersed in the text instead of being segregated to a series of glossy pages in the middle of the book. It'd be nice to see Mercator's famous map somewhere near the section of the text in which it is mentioned. In addition, certain things that I'd like to have seen illustrated weren't. For example, photos of George Graham's escapement, which made clocks more accurate by making pendulum swings more uniform, would have been nice. No doubt mechanical engineers reading the book would have no problems visualizing Graham's invention but simpletons like me could use a visual aid. Of course, with the Internet it's not hard to find such aids. You can watch the escapement in action here, for example. I suppose this means that Burke's books are prime candidates for e-books enhanced with more photos and video. In the meantime, keep an eye on his Knowledge Web, an educational website dedicated to exploring “information in a highly interconnected, holistic way that allows for an almost infinite number of paths of exploration among people, places, things, and events.”