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The Rise of Baking Powder Business: The Northeast, 1856–1876

Linda Civitello

in Baking Powder Wars: The Cutthroat Food Fight that Revolutionized Cooking

In antebellum America, baking powder experimentation moved out of women’s kitchens and into men’s laboratories as chemistry became a serious discipline. In 1856, Eben Horsford, a chemistry professor ... More

In antebellum America, baking powder experimentation moved out of women’s kitchens and into men’s laboratories as chemistry became a serious discipline. In 1856, Eben Horsford, a chemistry professor at Harvard, patented the first true baking powder, which he called yeast powder. It coincided with the discovery that yeast was a live fungus, which disgusted Americans concerned about food adulteration, and who flocked to baking powder bread made without fermentation. In 1868, in New York City, salesman William Ziegler, together with pharmacists the Hoagland brothers, formed the Royal Baking Powder Company, which used cream of tartar, a formula different from Horsford’s.Less

Fighting the Segregation Amendment: Black and Mexican American Responses to Proposition 14 in Los Angeles

Max Felker-Kantor

in Black and Brown in Los Angeles: Beyond Conflict and Coalition

This chapter focuses on the responses of African Americans and Mexican Americans to Proposition 14—dubbed the antifair housing initiative—in Los Angeles, with particular emphasis on the interracial ... More

This chapter focuses on the responses of African Americans and Mexican Americans to Proposition 14—dubbed the antifair housing initiative—in Los Angeles, with particular emphasis on the interracial cooperation and tension that marked the battle against the proposed amendment to California's constitution that allowed homeowners and landlords to sell or rent—or refuse to sell or rent—their property to anyone they wished. Proposition 14 was an effort in 1964 to basically overturn California's Rumford Fair Housing Act and to open the door once again to residential segregation. Activists, especially in the African American community, developed an intensive campaign to overturn the initiative. Early plans calling for cooperation with Mexican Americans never materialized. This chapter shows that Blacks were able to overcome their class divisions and close ranks in the fight against Proposition 14, whereas Mexican American remained a split community and vote.Less

Franck and Germany after 1945

in Science and Conscience: The Life of James Franck

After the Second World War, James Franck launched an appeal on the issue of an inadequate supply of food in the German population. He joined other prominent American Jewish refugees in a public call ... More

After the Second World War, James Franck launched an appeal on the issue of an inadequate supply of food in the German population. He joined other prominent American Jewish refugees in a public call for such humanitarian aid, pointing out that many children and innocents were suffering. The year 1946 brought Franck much personal happiness and scientific success. He continued his research in photosynthesis and eventually, his interests extended beyond photosynthesis. A few years later, he was awarded the Max Planck Medal, the highest German distinction in physics. The Boston Academy of Arts and Sciences also awarded him their Rumford medal.Less

Dissident Communists

Alan M. Wald

in New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left From the 1930s to the 1980s

The development of an anti-Stalinist Left among pro-Communist intellectuals is explored. Receiving special treatment are the pages of Menorah Journal and the activities of some of its contributors, ... More

The development of an anti-Stalinist Left among pro-Communist intellectuals is explored. Receiving special treatment are the pages of Menorah Journal and the activities of some of its contributors, along with intellectuals attracted to the American Workers Party and those involved in the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners and League of Professionals. James Rorty and Charles Rumford Walker are among activists described A sustained analysis of Tess Slesinger’s novel The Unpossessed is presented in the context of this background.Less

From the Classical Soup Kitchen to the Irish Famine

Tom Scott-Smith

in On an Empty Stomach: Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief

This chapter describes how the soup kitchen, based on an Elizabethan model but subsequently scaled up to meet the vast needs of a new urban underclass, became a standardized technology of relief by ... More

This chapter describes how the soup kitchen, based on an Elizabethan model but subsequently scaled up to meet the vast needs of a new urban underclass, became a standardized technology of relief by the middle of the nineteenth century. It returns to Alexis Soyer as well as a man called Count Rumford, who brought the soup kitchen into the modern age. Count Rumford's commitment to everyday reform generated a new word, “rumfordizing,” which meant improving and refining something in accordance with natural laws. In the 1790s he started to rumfordize the soup kitchen. With Rumford's help, the soup kitchen developed to meet the scale of need in urban areas, culminating in Alexis Soyer's “soup-shop of soup-shops” in Dublin. Rumford's vision of the soup kitchen, however, acted as a pivot between the classical and modern periods, before nutritional science emerged onto the scene.Less

Caloric theory: beginning of its end

Robert T. Hanlon

in Block by Block: The Historical and Theoretical Foundations of Thermodynamics

The early 1800s provided new evidence challenging the caloric theory when Rumford bored a cannon and boiled water, Davy melted ice by using friction, and Young made the connection between light and ... More

The early 1800s provided new evidence challenging the caloric theory when Rumford bored a cannon and boiled water, Davy melted ice by using friction, and Young made the connection between light and radiant heat. Mayer and Joule then succeeded in killing caloric by simply ignoring it and instead embracing work–heat equivalence.Less

Rumford, Davy, and Young

Jennifer Coopersmith

in Energy, the Subtle Concept: The discovery of Feynman's blocks from Leibniz to Einstein

Benjamin Thompson (later Count Rumford), founder of the Royal Institution, designs experiments showing that an ‘inexhaustible’ quantity of heat is generated by friction when cannons are bored with an ... More

Benjamin Thompson (later Count Rumford), founder of the Royal Institution, designs experiments showing that an ‘inexhaustible’ quantity of heat is generated by friction when cannons are bored with an especially blunt borer. The caloric theory can’t explain this, but Rumford’s work isn’t taken up until Joule, 40 years later. Humphry Davy and the polymath Thomas Young endorse the motion theory of heat and are hired as lecturers at the Royal Institution. Young puts forward the idea that radiant heat and light are the same thing, waves, but at different frequencies; and William Herschel and Ritter discover heat and ultraviolet radiation, respectively. Other connections are noticed between heat, light, chemistry, electricity, and magnetism (e.g. in Volta’s pile, and the Seebeck and Peltier effects). Young uses the term ‘energy’ in his A Course of Lectures in Natural Philosophy.Less

Revolt in the Suburbs

John W. Compton

in The End of Empathy: Why White Protestants Stopped Loving Their Neighbors

This chapter examines some of the forces that led to the decline of mainline Protestant religious authority in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, it argues that the waning of religious authority ... More

This chapter examines some of the forces that led to the decline of mainline Protestant religious authority in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, it argues that the waning of religious authority during these decades liberated upwardly mobile white Americans to follow their own inclinations and interests, not only in their personal lives but also in their thinking about politics and society. And it was at precisely this point that many of them developed a sudden affinity for the extreme libertarian view that the use of state power to correct systemic injustice or redirect resources to the less fortunate was fundamentally illegitimate. The chapter concludes with an account of mainline Protestant leaders’ failed campaign to defeat Proposition 14, a 1964 ballot measure that repealed California’s fair housing law.Less