WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:08.119 Hello, I'm welcaned stories all the time. The lad you 2 00:00:08.160 --> 00:00:11.039 are here, Let's get into it. The book was a 3 00:00:11.039 --> 00:00:14.080 stranger among the day's returns, bigger, heavier, and more battered 4 00:00:14.080 --> 00:00:16.079 than the slain volumes of art history and the hope 5 00:00:16.160 --> 00:00:19.000 l hardbacks on digital literacy that usually made the morning circuit. 6 00:00:19.600 --> 00:00:22.399 Its cloth cover was worn almost smooth, the original color 7 00:00:22.440 --> 00:00:25.120 something between navy and milty, rendered patchwork of stains by 8 00:00:25.120 --> 00:00:28.239 time and careless hands. The spine bore a call number 9 00:00:28.239 --> 00:00:31.079 and two layers of faded in itself, nearly rendered eligible 10 00:00:31.079 --> 00:00:33.280 by a sticker corner that had long ago been removed. 11 00:00:33.960 --> 00:00:37.079 Beneath both, pressed fatally into the fabric was a gold 12 00:00:37.119 --> 00:00:42.320 title on Disputed Principles and Devices, below the author's name, E. D. Harrow. 13 00:00:43.119 --> 00:00:46.119 I'd spend enough years in industrial design, first as an engineer, 14 00:00:46.280 --> 00:00:48.399 then as a trouble shitter for other people's mistakes to 15 00:00:48.439 --> 00:00:51.600 recognize shirley work when I saw it. But even at glance, 16 00:00:51.679 --> 00:00:54.520 this was no slap dust treaders. The binding might have 17 00:00:54.520 --> 00:00:57.079 gone soft at the edges, the pages yellowed and ballied, 18 00:00:57.079 --> 00:00:59.600 but the proportions the squared corners in the heavy block 19 00:00:59.640 --> 00:01:02.560 print all signaled a formal ambition. It was a but 20 00:01:02.679 --> 00:01:04.840 meant to last by some one who believed in the 21 00:01:04.840 --> 00:01:08.519 permanence of their ideas. It was a slow warning. Some 22 00:01:08.680 --> 00:01:12.040 accession was between terms. The stacks droused. I sat behind 23 00:01:12.040 --> 00:01:13.760 a battered cut at the end of the rare book's wing, 24 00:01:13.879 --> 00:01:17.000 letting the musty come sink into my joints. Around me. 25 00:01:17.120 --> 00:01:19.439 The air carried a gentle craft coming from somewhere back 26 00:01:19.439 --> 00:01:22.519 among the sealed rooms. After a minute, I picked up 27 00:01:22.519 --> 00:01:25.159 the Herrow volume, pressing down on the stens of call number, 28 00:01:25.319 --> 00:01:29.079 feeling its resistance inside the front matter confirmed the promise 29 00:01:29.159 --> 00:01:31.719 published in eighteen eighty seven for Education and the Improvement 30 00:01:31.760 --> 00:01:35.400 of Inquiry at Edlington Press in Manchester. No less, only 31 00:01:35.439 --> 00:01:38.560 the forward and the table of contents were typeset. The rest, 32 00:01:38.560 --> 00:01:41.480 to my surprise, was a tidy but cramped hand, laboriously 33 00:01:41.480 --> 00:01:43.599 blotting out most white space, and so black it nearly 34 00:01:43.640 --> 00:01:49.159 gleaned the contents themselves. Seen spars nine chapters on experimental interventions, 35 00:01:49.400 --> 00:01:52.439 the trials of contradictory phenomena. It tabled results and a 36 00:01:52.480 --> 00:01:56.120 final one simply concluding devices. But when I turned to 37 00:01:56.159 --> 00:01:59.439 the first chapter, I felt to napaus The main text, 38 00:01:59.480 --> 00:02:01.879 for all its pretense, was briefer than I expected, a 39 00:02:01.920 --> 00:02:05.719 less of materials, assertions about trials, brief promises of further 40 00:02:05.799 --> 00:02:10.000 elucidation below every few sentences, blocky superscript numbers sent my 41 00:02:10.039 --> 00:02:12.240 eyes down to footnotes. As long as the main paragraph 42 00:02:12.280 --> 00:02:16.159 above these footnotes, when mere clarifications or commentary, the unspold, 43 00:02:16.159 --> 00:02:19.680 meticulous instructions and augued points absent from the body sea 44 00:02:19.719 --> 00:02:23.159 Fake nine, in which Accombe is demonstrated beyond accidental deviation. 45 00:02:23.360 --> 00:02:27.360 One insisted further down. Another compared the resistance measured under 46 00:02:27.400 --> 00:02:30.120 the third trial pp. One hundred ninety two, one hundred 47 00:02:30.159 --> 00:02:32.759 ninety three to the contradictory outcome in Table A Wall 48 00:02:32.960 --> 00:02:36.520 Roman three. But there was no figure nine, no Table A, 49 00:02:36.719 --> 00:02:38.759 no volume rom In three. As far as I could tell, 50 00:02:38.759 --> 00:02:40.759 this was the only book attributed to Harrow anywhere in 51 00:02:40.800 --> 00:02:43.759 the Day's Returns, and the next chapters opening paginated straight 52 00:02:43.759 --> 00:02:46.800 from fourteen to twenty, with nothing in between. For a while, 53 00:02:46.919 --> 00:02:50.000 I flipped back and forth, searching for diagrams, appended tables, 54 00:02:50.039 --> 00:02:54.159 or section breaks. Instead, a moonscape of barren margins, brief 55 00:02:54.199 --> 00:02:57.280 peaks of maintext beside deep valors of densely reference detail 56 00:02:57.280 --> 00:03:00.639 which footnotes. Somehow, the more I looked, the more elaborate 57 00:03:00.680 --> 00:03:03.120 the interwoven commentary became, until it threatened to dwarf the 58 00:03:03.120 --> 00:03:06.360 core argument itself. I wondered if pages had been torn out, 59 00:03:06.520 --> 00:03:09.960 or perhaps misplaced somewhere in the rebinding process. But there 60 00:03:09.960 --> 00:03:12.759 were no signs of excision, no rugged edges, no loose 61 00:03:12.759 --> 00:03:15.400 stitches in the spine, no ghostly shadows where plates might 62 00:03:15.439 --> 00:03:18.000 once have been pasted and removed. The book was as 63 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:20.599 it was last bound, and had perhaps always been. The 64 00:03:20.639 --> 00:03:23.800 book seemed obsessed with thein scene. This book of experiments 65 00:03:23.800 --> 00:03:26.439 refined in the supplemental Erada date of found, conclusive in 66 00:03:26.520 --> 00:03:30.080 volumes not here reproduced, and methodologies presented only to the Academy. 67 00:03:30.719 --> 00:03:33.759 Each footnote led to another, mapping a landscape of references 68 00:03:33.759 --> 00:03:36.479 within a texo. Theen as to be nearly absent. If 69 00:03:36.520 --> 00:03:38.680 I was being honest, it felt less and complete than 70 00:03:38.719 --> 00:03:41.919 what intent On was holding. By the time the clock 71 00:03:41.960 --> 00:03:43.759 up of the winchimed the hour, I realized I had 72 00:03:43.800 --> 00:03:46.439 been stirring at the same two pages for almost fifteen minutes. 73 00:03:47.199 --> 00:03:48.919 I checked the slips in the back, as if the 74 00:03:48.919 --> 00:03:52.240 circulation history would solve the riddle. Each holder had signed 75 00:03:52.240 --> 00:03:54.919 with the range of Viez nineteen eighteen, nineteen fifty two, 76 00:03:54.960 --> 00:03:58.240 then nothing until nineteen eighty nine. Most recent was Massess 77 00:03:58.240 --> 00:04:01.840 Bellamu's uncopperplate dated last week, with her initial sharp and formal. 78 00:04:02.360 --> 00:04:05.120 I found myself wandering again, as in every puzzling repair 79 00:04:05.120 --> 00:04:07.000 in my old work, not only what had been left out, 80 00:04:07.120 --> 00:04:10.240 but why for a book so meticulously present, why go 81 00:04:10.319 --> 00:04:12.800 to the trouble of mapping an entire architecture of reference, 82 00:04:12.800 --> 00:04:15.759 only to leave it empty. I closed the volume gently 83 00:04:15.800 --> 00:04:18.199 and set it aside, a faint tingle of purpose rising 84 00:04:18.199 --> 00:04:20.839 through my morning gloom. When I brought my collection of 85 00:04:20.879 --> 00:04:24.160 oddities for cataloging, Missess Bellamy was already hunched at her desk, 86 00:04:24.399 --> 00:04:27.560 orthopedic shoes tucked precisely under her skirt, spectacles perched so 87 00:04:27.639 --> 00:04:29.399 close to the bridge of her nose, the hinges all 88 00:04:29.399 --> 00:04:32.920 but vanished. The piles beside her are one of accession forms, 89 00:04:33.040 --> 00:04:35.920 one of returned donations, never seemed to shrink, only cycling 90 00:04:35.959 --> 00:04:38.879 color and labeling. She glanced up as I place Harrow's 91 00:04:38.959 --> 00:04:41.800 home in front of her emmel another stray from the 92 00:04:41.839 --> 00:04:44.839 dark ages. Her voice was a mixture of dry sunlight 93 00:04:44.879 --> 00:04:48.480 and unshakable formality. It was on the return cart I said, 94 00:04:49.120 --> 00:04:51.759 have you cattaloged it before? She noticed it with the 95 00:04:51.800 --> 00:04:54.600 tip of a pencil, eyeing the warp, spying with gentle disapproval. 96 00:04:55.319 --> 00:04:58.439 Likely one of our more enigmatic donations, she said, we 97 00:04:58.480 --> 00:05:01.720 have dozens, hundreds, perhaps of some orphans, more material than subject, 98 00:05:01.800 --> 00:05:06.600 less content than chronology. Page is missing, I offered. She 99 00:05:06.720 --> 00:05:09.480 peered down, leaping swiftly through the volume, then closing it 100 00:05:09.480 --> 00:05:13.079 with an uncharacteristic tap, as if sealing away the oddness. No, 101 00:05:13.279 --> 00:05:16.240 people sometimes expect gapt but as I usually say, most 102 00:05:16.240 --> 00:05:18.360 of these texts were never as linear as one might hope. 103 00:05:18.399 --> 00:05:21.959 Adenda adenda always more. I must have looked puzzled, because 104 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:24.519 she added, they belong here, if anywhere. Some books are 105 00:05:24.560 --> 00:05:27.639 mostly scaffolding. You know, a skeleton in the shape of scholarship, 106 00:05:28.199 --> 00:05:30.040 I smiled, though the joke sat on my lips like 107 00:05:30.079 --> 00:05:33.079 a pebble. She gestured for the accession slapper neatly slid 108 00:05:33.120 --> 00:05:35.279 the book on to her own categorized shelf, where the 109 00:05:35.279 --> 00:05:37.480 detritus of centuries waited for some one with the time 110 00:05:37.560 --> 00:05:40.199 or curiosity to plot their coordinates and a chaos. The 111 00:05:40.279 --> 00:05:43.560 rare books were in sprawled through three labyrinthine rooms, each 112 00:05:43.600 --> 00:05:46.279 section by sated by cathedral. Tall shelves of Oku's green 113 00:05:46.319 --> 00:05:48.879 curl into knotsle like storm clouds, seemed to exist in 114 00:05:48.879 --> 00:05:52.240 perpetual dusk. The university library as a whole was a 115 00:05:52.240 --> 00:05:55.720 living palimpsist cram floor gleaming with Tomorrow's technology. The rare 116 00:05:55.720 --> 00:05:58.160 books wing left mostly to dustin in erection. More haunted 117 00:05:58.160 --> 00:06:00.720 by the past than curated by This was a world 118 00:06:00.720 --> 00:06:03.319 of tactile details, the gentle rasp of a cart's wheels 119 00:06:03.319 --> 00:06:06.079 across ancient carpet, the dry peppers, mell of ink and mold. 120 00:06:06.240 --> 00:06:08.399 When thows whose diamond pins shivered in their leads were 121 00:06:08.439 --> 00:06:11.240 never the wind rows. Some shelves grew so tall that 122 00:06:11.319 --> 00:06:14.199 only the ladders, with their brush rails, permitted even assess 123 00:06:14.199 --> 00:06:17.439 bellamy dust the upper reaches. The card catalogs here were 124 00:06:17.439 --> 00:06:20.199 hand written, sometimes in old gem script, sometimes in the 125 00:06:20.199 --> 00:06:23.519 block capitals of the nineteen twenties clerical tradition into leaf 126 00:06:23.519 --> 00:06:28.399 cards misletters miscataloged authors, or referenced works transferred missing or pending. 127 00:06:28.959 --> 00:06:30.959 On one row, I'd found a drawer with a single 128 00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:34.120 trembling card written entirely in pencil. See also Shelf nineteen, 129 00:06:34.160 --> 00:06:37.519 Item four, possibly removed in nineteen fifty four. No Shelf 130 00:06:37.600 --> 00:06:41.199 nineteen remained in the maze of shelving. Interns and professors 131 00:06:41.279 --> 00:06:45.040 chased their own morosers. Some undergraduates on Fienfield quests would 132 00:06:45.079 --> 00:06:47.160 dash in on a rumor of a lost letter from Newton, 133 00:06:47.279 --> 00:06:49.839 treat the rarities as mus or scavenger hunt, and vanished 134 00:06:49.920 --> 00:06:53.519 just as quickly. Others, older regulars moved through the outlines 135 00:06:53.560 --> 00:06:55.560 of the stacks like monks. He'd long ago committed every 136 00:06:55.600 --> 00:06:59.319 piffole to memory. One in particular, Doctor Rum Sen middle 137 00:06:59.319 --> 00:07:01.720 age theory or physics, subject for whom office hours were 138 00:07:01.759 --> 00:07:04.480 a polite fiction. Whom senne ambled through the rare books, 139 00:07:04.480 --> 00:07:07.639 wing almost daily, batting abstractly at the past for applications 140 00:07:07.639 --> 00:07:10.199 he could mine for a paper, or discussing old disputes 141 00:07:10.240 --> 00:07:12.800 purely for their charm. I'd met him in my first 142 00:07:12.800 --> 00:07:15.079 month as a volunteer. He'd asked if anyone had yet 143 00:07:15.079 --> 00:07:19.319 written a satisfactory history of hyperbolic entropeneus calculations. Then there 144 00:07:19.360 --> 00:07:22.480 was Leel, a graduate student in library science, sharp but reserved, 145 00:07:22.519 --> 00:07:25.040 who had somehow appointed herself guardian of the fragile indexes 146 00:07:25.079 --> 00:07:28.319 and broken my crowfiche Leila seemed to divide her attention 147 00:07:28.399 --> 00:07:31.600 between digitization work and quietly challenging the metadated conventions of 148 00:07:31.639 --> 00:07:34.879 centuries old cataloging. Only on the rare occasions when she 149 00:07:34.920 --> 00:07:37.399 spotted a crucial contradiction would I ever see her truly 150 00:07:37.439 --> 00:07:42.000 animated routines were everything here my own ran on rails, morning, 151 00:07:42.040 --> 00:07:45.800 shelving afnians, helping Missess bell Emmy with new donations, intermittent 152 00:07:45.879 --> 00:07:49.639 help to lead a deciphering palaeography or wrangling legacy date bisfields. 153 00:07:50.120 --> 00:07:52.839 Every week, someone usually an undergraduate, would show a basking 154 00:07:52.839 --> 00:07:55.360 for that volume on cold fusion, the one published before 155 00:07:55.360 --> 00:07:57.879 Cold Fusion existed, or copy of Jewel's letters with the 156 00:07:57.879 --> 00:08:01.000 MARGINALI you can only read under blue life. The boundary 157 00:08:01.079 --> 00:08:03.879 between scientific history and campus Foulkhoors was as thin as 158 00:08:03.879 --> 00:08:07.480 a leaf of onion skin. I like disorder, Unlike the 159 00:08:07.519 --> 00:08:10.480 noisy and determinacy of engineering oddities here emerged one at 160 00:08:10.480 --> 00:08:12.600 a time, and with enough time an effort, most could 161 00:08:12.639 --> 00:08:16.439 be reason through, except Harrow's book. The next day I 162 00:08:16.519 --> 00:08:18.759 returned to the rare book's wing. The hairrow volumes still 163 00:08:18.759 --> 00:08:22.040 on my mind. Something about the architecture of its citations 164 00:08:22.040 --> 00:08:25.439 tugged at me. Lines thrown into empty space. After lunch, 165 00:08:25.680 --> 00:08:28.519 I retrieved it from Missus Bellamy's shoving pile, ignoring her 166 00:08:28.600 --> 00:08:31.800 raised ibra. I settled at the same window, light filtered 167 00:08:31.800 --> 00:08:34.360 through frosted glass, battering the page in soft gold, and 168 00:08:34.440 --> 00:08:38.960 began to chart footnotes against the opposed targets. The contradictions proliferated. 169 00:08:39.480 --> 00:08:42.039 Footnotes cross referenced each other in ways that formed lips. 170 00:08:42.039 --> 00:08:44.120 One would direct me to a scene in note eighteen p. P. 171 00:08:44.279 --> 00:08:47.320 Fifty four, only to find eighteen, redirecting two steps later 172 00:08:47.399 --> 00:08:51.039 to an absent diagram clarified in footnote twenty two. Sometimes 173 00:08:51.200 --> 00:08:53.159 and knot of references would tangle up in a self 174 00:08:53.200 --> 00:08:56.559 referential spiral. This is merely the preliminary form of the result, 175 00:08:56.639 --> 00:08:58.960 subject to revision, as by the findings established in the 176 00:08:58.960 --> 00:09:02.440 missing appendix. Everything invited pursuit and then denied it. The 177 00:09:02.440 --> 00:09:06.120 specificity both tantalizing and infuriating. I wondered if Harrow was 178 00:09:06.200 --> 00:09:08.799 some crank, one of those nineteenth century self taught inventors 179 00:09:08.799 --> 00:09:11.879 who scattered Granio's claims and references like a trail of breadcrumbs, 180 00:09:11.960 --> 00:09:14.639 confident no one would ever bother to check. But the 181 00:09:14.679 --> 00:09:19.039 craftsmanship was too precise. Somehow, the footnotes toned pedantic, perhaps 182 00:09:19.039 --> 00:09:21.600 even Attachedmoker suggested an audience that would be equipped to 183 00:09:21.679 --> 00:09:24.399 understand if only access to the sight of diagrams or 184 00:09:24.480 --> 00:09:27.360 volumes could be obtained. By this point, I wanted to 185 00:09:27.399 --> 00:09:29.799 check not just Harrer's work, but the sources he cited. 186 00:09:30.600 --> 00:09:33.799 I tried the digital library catalog no luck search and 187 00:09:33.840 --> 00:09:37.679 consolidated tables of barometric experiments. While three Appendix Roman two 188 00:09:37.960 --> 00:09:41.679 I received exactly zero returns from any online holdings. A 189 00:09:41.759 --> 00:09:44.759 generic websitch yielded only pay wal pds of Doctor the Seas. 190 00:09:45.440 --> 00:09:47.759 Back in the real world, I sought the old Marston Index, 191 00:09:47.840 --> 00:09:50.759 kept in cold storage beneath the periodicals, now digitized in 192 00:09:50.799 --> 00:09:53.879 part and just as incomplete. No mention of Harrow, no 193 00:09:54.039 --> 00:09:56.840 volumes matching the publisher or the supplemental treatise is named 194 00:09:56.840 --> 00:10:00.240 obliquely in the footnotes. I flagged Dan Leela as he 195 00:10:00.240 --> 00:10:03.440 transcribe me some Latin titles. You ever see anything like this, 196 00:10:04.279 --> 00:10:07.360 I asked, holding out the book. She adjusted her glasses 197 00:10:07.360 --> 00:10:10.159 and flicked through the pages with practice speed. Her eyes 198 00:10:10.240 --> 00:10:13.799 narrowed slightly, harrow that's not in the main catalog. These 199 00:10:13.840 --> 00:10:17.000 citations all look fabricated. She held up a hand before 200 00:10:17.039 --> 00:10:20.440 I could object. I mean, not in the completely faked sense. 201 00:10:20.480 --> 00:10:22.480 But we've got a few books like this. Mostly it's 202 00:10:22.519 --> 00:10:25.559 just patting. Authors back then cited one another to sound authoritative. 203 00:10:25.720 --> 00:10:30.320 If you check, most are dead ends. But these reference specifics, diagrams. 204 00:10:30.360 --> 00:10:33.919 Surely an author wouldn't invent her, she shrugged. In the 205 00:10:34.000 --> 00:10:37.240 nineteenth century, peer review is piecemeal. You published, you claimed 206 00:10:37.240 --> 00:10:39.639 what you needed, and by the time anyone challenged your reference, 207 00:10:39.720 --> 00:10:41.919 the next edition would quietly omit the error. You'd be 208 00:10:41.960 --> 00:10:44.879 surprised how much early scigns were smoke and mirrors. I 209 00:10:44.960 --> 00:10:47.080 thanked her and brought the book to Missess Bellamy, who 210 00:10:47.080 --> 00:10:49.240 offered the professional equivalent of a pat on the shoulder. 211 00:10:49.399 --> 00:10:51.759 Many of our older holdings of patch those footboats are 212 00:10:51.759 --> 00:10:54.879 probably just obsolete Citaians best not to loose sleep over them. 213 00:10:55.360 --> 00:10:58.320 But I did not in the frantic personal way I 214 00:10:58.399 --> 00:11:01.080 used to let all quotechical mysteries of my evenings, but 215 00:11:01.159 --> 00:11:03.279 in a lighter, more insistent weaight, as if the book 216 00:11:03.320 --> 00:11:05.919 itself was daring me to spot its game. Footnotes are 217 00:11:05.919 --> 00:11:09.360 supposed to clarify, not obscure, I thought, But here they 218 00:11:09.360 --> 00:11:13.559 erected a whole palace of specificity, experiments, figures, observations where 219 00:11:13.559 --> 00:11:17.840 no such rooms existed. The contradiction was almost enjoyable, so 220 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:21.240 I changed tack. Instead of treating the missing content as 221 00:11:21.279 --> 00:11:23.639 mere absence, I followed the footnotes as if they were real. 222 00:11:24.240 --> 00:11:27.600 I made a notebook listing each one, summarizing the supposed content, 223 00:11:27.799 --> 00:11:30.000 note and cross references, and which the results seemed to 224 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:32.720 defy the usual rules. Then I set out to find 225 00:11:32.720 --> 00:11:35.840 their neighbors. Near Harrow's tomb, I found a shelf of 226 00:11:35.879 --> 00:11:38.159 science texts from the same era, each bearing layers of 227 00:11:38.159 --> 00:11:42.559 accession slips, bookmarks, and in several cases more elaborate footnote chains. 228 00:11:43.200 --> 00:11:44.840 The next run up was to treat his on Light 229 00:11:44.919 --> 00:11:48.399 Unreversible Processes dated eighteen ninety one, whose furtnotes referenced not 230 00:11:48.440 --> 00:11:51.200 only diegrounds but entire experiments that could not possibly fit 231 00:11:51.279 --> 00:11:54.279 within its slen account of pages. One sided, they lost 232 00:11:54.279 --> 00:11:58.879 appendix on thermal inversion available on consultation. Another more obscure 233 00:11:58.919 --> 00:12:02.000 advised the reader to compare with the unratified plates item nine. 234 00:12:02.399 --> 00:12:04.440 In half a dozen books have found the same pattern, 235 00:12:04.600 --> 00:12:07.679 elaborate for notes leading not just to imaginary diagrams, but 236 00:12:07.759 --> 00:12:11.840 to unpublished tables lost erada, supplemental data correspondence with the 237 00:12:11.919 --> 00:12:15.960 name societies, pending reviews, conclusive observations literally know where to 238 00:12:15.960 --> 00:12:20.440 be found. In nineteen thirties monographam thermodynamics proclaim in footnote 239 00:12:20.480 --> 00:12:22.960 seven the frost effect, which heat migrates from cold to 240 00:12:22.960 --> 00:12:26.799 hot under non differentiable conditions, is illustrated involved seventeen appendix 241 00:12:26.879 --> 00:12:31.240 D with all diagrams extant. I checked no such volume, 242 00:12:31.440 --> 00:12:34.360 no Appendix D, and no library records indicating any such 243 00:12:34.360 --> 00:12:38.320 collections had ever circulated. Returning again to Leelah, I asked, 244 00:12:38.440 --> 00:12:41.519 you mentioned academic bluffing, but the details here theresore deliberate, 245 00:12:41.559 --> 00:12:44.159 the diagrams, the fonotes crossing into other books, even the 246 00:12:44.240 --> 00:12:47.919 names too consistent for sloppiness. She balanced two volumes under 247 00:12:47.919 --> 00:12:50.679 her arm her postuary for it's an art effect of 248 00:12:50.679 --> 00:12:52.799 how they wrote back then. Self reference made you sound 249 00:12:52.960 --> 00:12:55.080 like part of a scholarly debate, even if you were alone. 250 00:12:55.120 --> 00:12:57.080 I doubt any of these false references were meant to 251 00:12:57.120 --> 00:13:00.559 be actually followed. Doctor room Sen passing by and catching 252 00:13:00.559 --> 00:13:03.720 the last of my question, grinned. All researchers got it 253 00:13:03.759 --> 00:13:06.879 wrong all the time. Nineteenth century physics. Half the footnotes 254 00:13:06.879 --> 00:13:09.519 and nonsense half were scholarly in jokes. My favorite is 255 00:13:09.559 --> 00:13:12.440 as demonstrated by the experiments in Smidley's revised edition. No 256 00:13:12.480 --> 00:13:15.600 one's ever found a Smidley or revision. It was, if 257 00:13:15.639 --> 00:13:18.080 nothing else, a comfort to see that the phenomenon was noted, 258 00:13:18.120 --> 00:13:20.960 if not worried over. But something in me resisted these 259 00:13:20.960 --> 00:13:24.679 easy explanations. With my engineers itch for order and mapped 260 00:13:24.679 --> 00:13:27.360 the pattern in a spiral bound noteok. The footnotes, their recursion, 261 00:13:27.360 --> 00:13:29.320 the web of references from one book to the next. 262 00:13:29.879 --> 00:13:31.799 It was less a less than a kind of architectural 263 00:13:31.879 --> 00:13:35.960 drawing arrows looping back dotted lines, crossing centuries, curving around 264 00:13:35.960 --> 00:13:38.679 the empty harp of each text. And what nagged at 265 00:13:38.679 --> 00:13:41.080 me was this the granularity, at the specificity, the feeling 266 00:13:41.080 --> 00:13:44.240 that these absent experiments, if false or omitted or apocryphal, 267 00:13:44.320 --> 00:13:47.720 were meant to be chased. Something more complicated than scholarly 268 00:13:47.720 --> 00:13:50.639 neglect had left these footprints. But to what end I 269 00:13:50.639 --> 00:13:53.080 couldn't say. I spent the better part of a week 270 00:13:53.080 --> 00:13:55.840 tracing more footnote trails. There was a kind of thrill 271 00:13:55.879 --> 00:13:58.080 in each new revelation, since that the rare books wing 272 00:13:58.080 --> 00:14:00.600 itself harbored not a single mystery, but a word of 273 00:14:00.639 --> 00:14:03.399 denials and echoes its way, pressing with invisible hands from 274 00:14:03.399 --> 00:14:06.360 every side. My notebook filled with trails, a footnote in 275 00:14:06.399 --> 00:14:09.120 one volume withly by author, date or technical tempt, or 276 00:14:09.200 --> 00:14:11.799 reference in another book across the stacks, and that in 277 00:14:11.840 --> 00:14:15.279 turn reference yet a third whose claimed supplement no longer existed. 278 00:14:15.919 --> 00:14:18.519 Once tracing a chain that ran through nineteen eleven volume 279 00:14:18.519 --> 00:14:21.039 on electro Chemistry, I found a footnote detailing in doctor 280 00:14:21.080 --> 00:14:25.480 Beckett's negative resissors illustrated in the registered appendices. That phrase 281 00:14:25.559 --> 00:14:29.639 negative resistance stood out. Curious, I looked for similar references 282 00:14:29.639 --> 00:14:32.639 in the index, but only more spirals emerred sea appendix, 283 00:14:32.879 --> 00:14:36.639 registered devices, is seareum sends treaties, fall Roman I none 284 00:14:36.720 --> 00:14:40.440 captured by any database or shelf. Undergraduate students and visiting 285 00:14:40.519 --> 00:14:43.759 fellows flooded in an oblivious to my growing obsession. On 286 00:14:43.799 --> 00:14:46.080 a Tuesday, I joined Missus Bellamy again with a fresh 287 00:14:46.120 --> 00:14:50.120 pile of footnoted oddities. She sniffed at one. I suppose 288 00:14:50.120 --> 00:14:53.279 you are assembling a new collection of unresolved problems, she remarked, 289 00:14:53.279 --> 00:14:55.759 but her tone was more be amused than dismissive. By 290 00:14:55.799 --> 00:14:58.840 now I was documenting the phenomenon in earnest charting footnotes, 291 00:14:58.840 --> 00:15:01.200 the claims which one spiraled out of the text into 292 00:15:01.240 --> 00:15:05.360 loss research which doubled back on themselves recussively. Not just Harrow, 293 00:15:05.480 --> 00:15:07.639 but a subtle spectrum of authors, each with their own 294 00:15:07.679 --> 00:15:11.200 strategies for referencing the unseen. It was on Thursday afternoon 295 00:15:11.240 --> 00:15:13.399 that I stumbled into a new contradiction of physical One 296 00:15:13.960 --> 00:15:17.000 buried in Harrow's chapter on the atmospheric pressure was the 297 00:15:17.039 --> 00:15:19.720 reversal of indicated pressure may be easily demonstrated by the 298 00:15:19.720 --> 00:15:22.320 procedure outlined in foot of twelve, using a paper funnel, 299 00:15:22.360 --> 00:15:25.799 glass of water, and convex miracy available figures. There were 300 00:15:25.799 --> 00:15:28.639 no figures, but the materials listed were all on hand, 301 00:15:28.799 --> 00:15:32.000 scattered about the reading room for displays or maintenance. It 302 00:15:32.039 --> 00:15:34.399 struck me as enough of an engineering challenge to provide 303 00:15:34.399 --> 00:15:38.960 a small distraction assembled the apparatuss described glass water, simple 304 00:15:38.960 --> 00:15:42.559 paper funnel, borrowed mirror. The experiment called for observing a 305 00:15:42.600 --> 00:15:45.600 barometer reading through the reflection measured as water were slowly 306 00:15:45.639 --> 00:15:49.000 poured with standard environmental pressure. According to the note, the 307 00:15:49.000 --> 00:15:51.159 pressure reading should invet when the funnel sage pass a 308 00:15:51.159 --> 00:15:54.679 certain angle and nabcome. I filed as impossible. Atmospheric pressure 309 00:15:54.679 --> 00:15:57.840 doesn't reverse. But when I tried it within the quiet 310 00:15:57.919 --> 00:16:00.960 wood paneled reading room, the barometer needleedst left, then briefly 311 00:16:01.000 --> 00:16:05.639 fractionally snapped right, just as the footnote predicted. I stood still, stirring, 312 00:16:05.679 --> 00:16:08.960 then repeated it same anomalous wing. For the third trial, 313 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:10.679 I moved the whole set up to the main corridor 314 00:16:10.720 --> 00:16:14.559 outside the rare book stacks. The results were ordinary, no wiggle, 315 00:16:14.639 --> 00:16:17.559 no reversal, just the ordinary sway of liquid and needle. 316 00:16:18.120 --> 00:16:20.799 I brought the equipment back to the original table, this 317 00:16:20.960 --> 00:16:24.200 time with careful attention. The effect repeated, not dramatic and 318 00:16:24.279 --> 00:16:26.720 not easily captured on my phone's grainy camera, but there 319 00:16:26.720 --> 00:16:29.679 impossible according to my training, and yet enacted precisely as 320 00:16:29.720 --> 00:16:32.639 written in a footnote. I tried a new experiment from 321 00:16:32.639 --> 00:16:35.559 a different books footnote, something involving placing a mercury thermometer 322 00:16:35.639 --> 00:16:38.840 against a tipped mankjustup of ambient in the reading room. 323 00:16:39.039 --> 00:16:42.679 The thermometer, against all logic, colled perceptibly with contact rather 324 00:16:42.720 --> 00:16:46.679 than warming in the corridor. Nothing. I ran these experiments 325 00:16:46.679 --> 00:16:49.399 twice more before the hour turned, enough to convince myself 326 00:16:49.399 --> 00:16:52.799 this wasn't mere equipment error or random variants. Only within 327 00:16:52.840 --> 00:16:55.320 the rare books wing, more specifically, within the bands of 328 00:16:55.320 --> 00:16:57.559 the reading room and the oldest stacks did the footnote 329 00:16:57.600 --> 00:17:00.639 a absurdities manifest. I shared my fe findings in half 330 00:17:00.639 --> 00:17:03.200 of spertones with Leela, who raised both eyebrows above her 331 00:17:03.240 --> 00:17:06.480 note book temperature readings going backwards in the reading room. 332 00:17:06.599 --> 00:17:10.640 She repeated, impossible. He tried it outside the wing twice, 333 00:17:10.799 --> 00:17:13.759 only happens back here. I felt the familiar twinge of 334 00:17:13.799 --> 00:17:15.759 self doubt. He never want to be the person reporting 335 00:17:15.799 --> 00:17:20.359 control to possibilities. Lila frowned, her skepticism shifted, not dismissed, 336 00:17:20.400 --> 00:17:22.440 but filed our new watch and sy maybe the readings 337 00:17:22.440 --> 00:17:25.559 are off bad equipment. I showed her the repeated trials. 338 00:17:25.640 --> 00:17:28.680 Eventually her reluctance softened into thought, you should try other 339 00:17:28.680 --> 00:17:32.680 footnotes see if any more work. So I did, cautiously methodically, 340 00:17:32.720 --> 00:17:36.720 always tracking which room, which table, which materials each time 341 00:17:36.799 --> 00:17:40.599 anomalies clustered within the original parts of the library, never outside. 342 00:17:41.119 --> 00:17:42.920 It was as if the room itself honored the phantom 343 00:17:43.000 --> 00:17:46.079 logic embedded in the footnotes, briefly allowing their impossible effects 344 00:17:46.119 --> 00:17:50.119 to surface. My curiosity overtook any lingering doubts. If these 345 00:17:50.160 --> 00:17:52.759 footnoted experiments could be enacted to f onely in this space, 346 00:17:52.880 --> 00:17:54.799 and only in this peculiar way, what did that mean 347 00:17:54.839 --> 00:17:57.640 for the hundreds of other footnotes leading nowhere? Had any 348 00:17:57.640 --> 00:18:01.640 one else noticed? My approach shifted. The mystery was no 349 00:18:01.720 --> 00:18:05.279 longer simply about missing diagrams or apocryphal citations, but about 350 00:18:05.279 --> 00:18:08.400 the effect of generations worth of references, physical, logical or 351 00:18:08.400 --> 00:18:11.960 otherwise on what could transpire inside this room. If impossibilities 352 00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:14.519 could lurk in the scaffolding of these footnotes, perhaps there 353 00:18:14.559 --> 00:18:16.799 was more architecture yet above and below, a hidden logic 354 00:18:16.839 --> 00:18:19.519 deep inside the library. Skin with my note, but now 355 00:18:19.519 --> 00:18:22.680 bristling with experiments failed and successful, I allowed myself to 356 00:18:22.680 --> 00:18:25.640 circle back to Harrow's book. If the footnotes were not 357 00:18:25.680 --> 00:18:29.160 simply referencing non existent diagrams, but inviting readers to enact 358 00:18:29.200 --> 00:18:32.160 the absent, what else might be found were triggered within 359 00:18:32.240 --> 00:18:35.960 these shelves. I spent the next week investigating further. Upon 360 00:18:36.039 --> 00:18:39.839 whispering of ardities, Massess Bellamy gracefully deflected, and Doctor Rumsen 361 00:18:39.960 --> 00:18:42.119 only gladly cautioned in ever or tribute to madness what 362 00:18:42.119 --> 00:18:45.480 can be explained by humidity and tradition. With each new attempt, 363 00:18:45.480 --> 00:18:48.960 my fascination grew. It no longer felt like solving a puzzle, 364 00:18:48.960 --> 00:18:51.039 but more like tracing the rules of a territory that, 365 00:18:51.160 --> 00:18:54.559 by rights shouldn't exist. One evening, as clouds drew the 366 00:18:54.640 --> 00:18:57.160 last light through the frosted windows, I found myself drawn 367 00:18:57.200 --> 00:18:59.519 to a locked cabinet behind Massess Bellamy's desk, a heavy 368 00:18:59.519 --> 00:19:03.119 glass from with doors that stuck odibly when opened. Missus 369 00:19:03.200 --> 00:19:05.039 Bellamy had given me a key earlier in the wheat 370 00:19:05.039 --> 00:19:07.319 for a different errand in a rare moment of indulgence, 371 00:19:07.359 --> 00:19:09.799 she'd said, if you find anything that needs for furbishing, 372 00:19:09.920 --> 00:19:12.799 be my guess, but mind the accession order. The bottom 373 00:19:12.880 --> 00:19:16.400 shelf stalled pamphlets by century thick with dust, the top 374 00:19:16.559 --> 00:19:19.359 row of anonymous brown bindings with critic mocks Edenda VI 375 00:19:19.559 --> 00:19:22.839 two A Erada Engineers add a chain of devices nineteen 376 00:19:22.839 --> 00:19:26.839 o two Handriton one bound only with linen thread, was 377 00:19:26.920 --> 00:19:30.759 bulky despite its slimness. On closer inspection, I realized it 378 00:19:30.799 --> 00:19:33.559 was almost entirely composed of the notes, page after page, 379 00:19:33.720 --> 00:19:37.759 densely packed referencing passages not only within itself but also crossed, 380 00:19:37.759 --> 00:19:40.759 preferencing other volumes, forming intertwining paths that went threw the 381 00:19:40.759 --> 00:19:43.680 book and back out again. Curious, I sat down at 382 00:19:43.720 --> 00:19:46.480 the nearest table, balancing the fragile binding across my knees. 383 00:19:47.160 --> 00:19:50.119 The footnotes form chains. See footnote eleven, pg. Eighteen for 384 00:19:50.200 --> 00:19:53.640 commentary on the anomalous prime flicking to eleven every as 385 00:19:53.680 --> 00:19:56.880 counterdemonstrated in fourth supplement entry seven versible factors in the 386 00:19:56.880 --> 00:19:59.680 odd prime sea faked three not included. It was a 387 00:19:59.759 --> 00:20:01.880 ciss um of self referral, ultimately leading not to a 388 00:20:01.920 --> 00:20:04.839 clarifying origin, but into a kind of infinite regression of strange, 389 00:20:04.839 --> 00:20:08.000 outdated labyrinth whose substance was all connective tissue, no core. 390 00:20:08.599 --> 00:20:11.359 Other fruitnetetexts in the Cabinet doubled down on the extraordinary 391 00:20:11.559 --> 00:20:14.599 marginal notes talked of negative resistance achieved in the reading 392 00:20:14.680 --> 00:20:18.119 room under particular annotation, entropy reversed in Cocoy's wiring a 393 00:20:18.319 --> 00:20:22.400 like counterpropagating in the reflection of missing diagraund mathematics volumes 394 00:20:22.440 --> 00:20:25.640 referenced prime numbers discovered with non integer factist pending review. 395 00:20:26.200 --> 00:20:28.720 I took one of these volumes, still mostly footnotes, and 396 00:20:28.759 --> 00:20:31.400 selected a simple experiment, wiring a closed circuit on the 397 00:20:31.400 --> 00:20:34.160 reading room table as described reversing the current direction a 398 00:20:34.200 --> 00:20:38.200 measuring voltage. The analog meter patched together but routinely calibrated 399 00:20:38.200 --> 00:20:42.039 a clicked upward, then impossibly backward. The anomalies could be tiny, 400 00:20:42.079 --> 00:20:46.319 hairlined deviations, but matched the footnote. Bizarre claianes. Scattered through 401 00:20:46.359 --> 00:20:49.559