Author: Annie Swafford

Google Ngrams: Crime in 19th Century London

~ Annie Swafford

For my project on ngrams, I decided to focus on the 1880’s mystery of Jack the Ripper.

google ngram graph jack the ripper

The first term I chose to search was, of course, “Jack the Ripper.” Strangely, though, the first activity shown on the graph is in 1883. I was a bit stumped as to why this was, because, by all accounts, the Ripper committed the series of murders in 1888. To try to dig deeper and figure out why there was an incongruence, I clicked the link on the bottom of the page for 1800-1889. I tried selecting a custom range of dates, but that proved unhelpful. It took me staring at the page awhile longer to realize that one of the books listed from 1880 was published by the American Kennel Club. Descriptions of that book and a few others featured buzzwords like “pedigree.”

I wonder how the owners of the show dog named Jack the Ripper felt when the little guy suddenly shared the moniker of a serial killer.

(Cute name, though… but I guess that depends on what kind of person you are.)

Overall, on its own, the alias saw a steady rise until a sharp increase occurred in 1888. No surprises there.

I found that words like “murder” or “crime” were far too broad; “Jack the Ripper” all but completely flat lined in comparison. Instead, I settled on “prostitute,” as they were primarily the victims. I attempted to use an inflection search of “prostitut_INF” in the hope of it including “prostitutes” and “prostitution,” but it came up with no results.

The height of the usage of the term “prostitute” was in 1804, followed by a decrease until it roughly leveled out in 1840. After having seen decreases beginning in 1861, the word’s appearance increased beginning in the mid 1880’s. It grew slowly but surely from then until 1900.

The rise could hardly rival the high point from 1804, but that it begins in the 1880’s hints at a possible argument that there is a correlation between the uses of the terms “Jack the Ripper” and “prostitute” in the texts of the time. While this could mean absolutely nothing, it could suggest an emphasis that was put on the identities of the victims.

Ngram: Eyeglasses vs. Contact Lenses

~ Annie Swafford

For my Ngram I decided to compare Eyeglasses to Contact Lenses, mainly because I have been having my own struggle with my contacts lately but even more of struggle with my glasses so the two items have been on my mind. Once I discovered that contact lenses were created in the 1800’s I figured it could work.

Ngram The contact lenses line is pretty easy to understand because the first example of wearable contacts were not invented until 1887 and they slowly but steadily grew in popularity. Although, the graph shows them increasing after the 1890’s because it wasn’t until a few years after their invention that contacts were being discussed in books. It was a tad harder to understand all the ups and downs of eyeglasses throughout the years. I did find that eyeglasses were not that popular in the early 1800’s because they were a sign of old age and weakness and also expensive so many did not wear them or even know they needed them. As for the boost in popularity in the 1820’s I believe that can be attributed to a new style of glasses becoming fashionable and the old round lenses going out of style and so more was probably written about on the topic of eyeglasses. The sharp decrease after this was a bit more difficult to understand but what I think may play a role in this decline is the financial crisis in the United States that began in 1837. I couldn’t find anything specifically related to eyeglasses themselves but if people had less money to spend that could be a cause. The rise during the 1850’s was tricky to decipher, the peak hits at 1854 but no history I found for 1854 explains this. It could be that people are coming out of the financial crisis and have more money but I don’t really know. There is also the founding of two large watch manufacturers during this time and this may be a stretch but there could be a correlation that with new watches and their prices increasing the price of glasses fell. This could also just be more written about glasses in this time and maybe more advertisements of sorts. I really can’t attribute it to one specific instance. The falls after this time is easily due to the civil war in America along with other political problems through the world. There were wars in New Zealand and South America during the 1860s as well as political issues between France and Mexico. There are also wars with Denmark and Prussia and then Prussia and Austria so in all there were political and economical issues throughout various countries. After the 1860’s eyeglasses steadily rise reaching their peak at the end of the 19th century this could be due to the end of many wars and political issues. People had more to spend and literature also seems to be on the rise during this time.  As far as my settings I did it with case sensitivity and from 1800 to 1900 from the corpus English.

Sherlock Holmes: The Blue Carbuncle (1892) and (1984) – Sam Eisenbaum

~ Annie Swafford

WORDCLOUDS– click on “enable editing.”

Word choice is imperative to determine the historical changes in dialect between the 1892 version and the 1984 television screenplay of Sherlock Holmes: The Blue Carbuncle. I’ve developed a deeper understanding of the societal shifts in history using word clouds and the word tools used to construct them.

Similar to Wordle, Voyant and Tagxedo, iLanguageCloud generates a word cloud that enlarges the most frequently used words found in a submitted text. My computer does not allow me to use java programs and, for whatever reason, would not let me update it so my choice in word mapping tools was limited. What I realized is that Java is essential on mobile platforms to navigate through Wordle and Tagxedo leaving Voyant as the only word cloud software tool compatible for both mobile usage and computers without Java installed. This simple inaccessibility is a concern for both Wordle and Tagxedo. These sites need to take in account the amount of mobile users who use their phones primarily for electronic applications and software. Wordle and Tagxedo must develop mobile friendly software to accompany their desktop companions in order to keep up with the digital age. Though I was inable to constitute a Wordle or Tagxedo word map, utilizing my mobile phone, I downloaded the application iLanguageCloud—a high comparable software tool alternative for word cloud creation.

The words: remarked, pray, retained, yes, market and case are used in Arthur Carter Doyle’s original 1892 version of The Blue Carbuncle; the words: foresight, milady, yeah, museum, jewel, God, police, and money are used in John Hawkesworth’s 1984 version. Both sets of words are respectfully divided using the iLanguageCloud software application for the smartphone.

In the first word cloud, generated by iLanguageCloud, we note the shift from “yes” to “yeah” as a formal to informal verbal transition from 1892 to 1984. We can see that “pray” is used in Doyle’s version while “God” is used in Hawkesworth’s version signifying a religious connection between the two. The words “remarked” and “retained” are used only in the 1892 version since they are observational words used by Watson and, being that the 1984 version is told in 3rd person, are of ill usage towards progressing the story. Before moving on to deeper connections, I will introduce the Voyant word cloud I developed using the same two versions of Sherlock Holmes: The Blue Carbuncle.

From an aesthetic standpoint, the iLanguageCloud word map produces an immaculate display of words in a neatly organized in a visually appealing array of spacing. The colors are vivid and the words, though numerous, do not feel squished, scrunched or displeasing to the eyes. This word map features a black background which makes the colorful words pop out, allowing easy readability and engagement. The Voyant word cloud offers an agitating bundle of colors pressed uncomfortably together in front of a white background. Voyant does not have nearly as many words displayed as iLanguageCloud does and yet, the spacing, alignment and design of Voyant’s word cloud is visually atrocious. Voyant offers 5 different colors varied between the multi-sized words framed in its oblate spheroid structure. iLanguageCloud offers around 15 colors that are much more thoughtfully designed, spaced and configured for optical viewing. Though Voyant may be less asthetically pleasing and does offer less words, Voyant displays keywords that iLanguageCloud did not pick up—perhaps more important for some aspects of comparison.

Voyant picked up the words: gas, beer, pounds, money, books, sold and police in John Hawkesworth’s 1984 version. This set of words is not found in Arthur Carter Doyle’s original 1892 version of The Blue Carbuncle. This is because within a century, the world became much more materialistic as commodities naturally became a larger part of our vocabulary, dialect and conversations. It’s interesting to see the word “gas” used in the 1984 version because the first gasoline powered automobile was developed in 1893—one year after Doyle’s version was published. In 1984, “gas” had become a commonly used word after automobiles became a commonplace method of transportation. Using word clouds allows us to infer connections of societal changes between two historical time frames.

Aside from the addition of materialistic references in the 1984 story, both 1984 word clouds suggest an upgraded view of women from the overtly misogynistic view of women in the 1892 version. Although perhaps a small detail, all four word clouds utilize the words (abbreviations) “Mr.” and “Mrs.” However, the word “Mrs.” is significantly larger, and thus more frequently used, in Hawkesworth’s word cloud than Doyle’s. We can infer that as time went by, women became more thoughtfully incorporated characters in Holmes’ stories in opposition to the sexist vision of female characters in 1892, portrayed as inferior for Sherlock’s amusement. iLanguageCloud also highlights the term, “milady,” used to address a woman in a noble manner. This term is found only in the 1984 version because Doyle would not have his male characters address women in this fashion.

Comparing iLanguageCloud and Voyant word clouds, we can identify the historical shift in language usage and its impact on our perception of both versions of Sherlock Holmes. Word cloud users are able to evaluate the context of each version’s social matter to recognize shifts in materialistic terminology as well as the transition to lesser misogynistic viewpoints. While iLanguageCloud offers a more in depth, visually appealing display of word mapping, Voyant offers a similar exhibition of vocabulary that highlights many of the same historical observations used to compare and contrast the century divided time periods of Sherlock Holmes: The Blue Carbuncle.

DeFranco_GoogleNgrams Assignment

~ Annie Swafford

Screen shot 2015-03-05 at 11.11.52 PMFor the Ngrams assignment I chose to look at the comparison between newspapers and magazines and I found it interesting that newspapers surpassed magazines around 1815. This could have happened for many reasons but I’ve made a few inferences. The first is that, though newspapers, in their earliest form, were first developed in the 1600s, it was not until the early 1800s that they began to become more standard, available and affordable. This is indicated where the increase in the word newspaper becomes clearly defined around 1825. Before this, both ‘newspaper’ and ‘magazine’ were pretty steady over the years with magazines even beginning on top. My theory for the much slower growth of magazines is that, like today, magazines were bought mostly for soft stories and entertainment. So big news events that effected the sales and popularity of newspapers had little to no effect on magazines.

The sharp rise of newspapers in the early 1830s was most likely brought about by the following societal developments: First, in 1831 The famous abolitionist newspaper The Liberator is first published by William Lloyd Garrison. Second, there was the The New York Sun newspaper that in 1833 cost one cent–this was the beginning of the penny press. Another spike shown on the chart for newspapers is around 1880. In this year the first halftone photograph (Shantytown) was published in a newspaper, most likely increasing their popularity. At the same time advertising was becoming more and more relevant with the first whole page newspaper ad placed by an American department store (John Wanamaker) was run in 1879. I imagine this would also increase the mentions of the word newspaper over time.

As for magazines there didn’t seem to be any spikes until about 1855. When I researched possible reasoning for this I found that in 1855 Illustrated London News published a Christmas special with a color cover produced using colored wood blocks. This magazine sold 130,000 copies a week–10 times the daily sale of The Times. That may have had something to do with that blip. When magazines start to grow steadily at the end of the 19th century this is most likely because, like newspapers, magazines began to increase in availability and affordability–leading to popularity.

Sources:
http://inventors.about.com/od/pstartinventions/a/printing_4.htm
http://www.magforum.com/time.htm

Ponies- Pets or Dinner?

~ Annie Swafford

Well I learned some darn cool things today! While using Google Ngram I thought to myself, what do I care about? I tried out a couple of words, typing in this and that just to get an idea of what words would work and what wouldn’t. (Guess what, Victorian people didn’t write about cookies like even a little bit, lame). I finally decided I wanted to know about pets but I figured typing just the name of three animals would be boring so I wrote instead “cat food, dog food, horse food”, because I like animals and I like food. I figured that which ever food for the specific animal was written about the most would prove to be the most popular animal of the specific times represented in the graph. So here we are, check it out: this   Alright, so what can we interpret from this graph? First of all, in the early 1800’s cats and dogs did not seem that common. Ponies on the other hand? Ponies were all the rave up until about 1818 when people were like actually, these things are smelly and I don’t even know how to ride them (I’m assuming this is what they said). Interesting side not, I typed in after “dog as food, cat as food, horse as food” and at around the late 1820’s was when the first time “horse as food” was written in a Victorian book, coincidence? Probably not. They stopped feeding the horses and started feeding the horses to themselves! (once again assumption not fact) “[D]og as food” was also written a couple of times but “cat as food” didn’t even register, guess they didn’t like Chinese food. Anyway, It seems that overwhelmingly horses were the priority pet, a couple of times competing with dogs until the late 19th century when dogs went up up up, down down down and then finished way up again completely destroying horses. Doing a little research on the Google concluded that horses, dogs and cats were all rather common household pets (horses probably weren’t kept in houses but you know what I mean). Lap dogs were very common among older Victorian ladies, some sources saying they cherished them more than their children. Ponies were common for children to learn to ride. As for cats, although they were less common, they were owned in many Victorian homes. Of course, the lower class never really owned domesticated animals in their homes, middle class and upper class were generally the only ones to. eat horse yumeat-a-horse

Lauren Gao’s Ngram Post: Daguerreotype, Camera Obscura, and Photography

~ Annie Swafford

For this week’s assignment, I chose to look at the three terms”daguerreotype”, “camera obscura” and “photography” in google’s Ngram viewer. All three terms ultimately relate to the create of photographic processes that we know today more informally as film photography, which preceded digital photography. Daguerreotype and camera obscura are two processes that entail reflecting light off of metal or other surfaces capable of bouncing light to capture images on another surface. These two terms were also the earliest forms of producing almost perfectly replica images in the way modern photography does. However, these two terms are not quite know outside of art history classes or photography majors yet the concept of photography is so integral to today’s society. Why is that? In an attempt to answer this question, I put these three terms into Ngram and the results are reflective of their status in the 19th century.

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Google Ngrams Project: Jane Austen vs. Mary Shelley

~ Annie Swafford

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For the Google Ngrams project, I chose the authors Jane Austen and Mary Shelley.  Jane Austen was born in 1775, however, her novels of romance were not widely known or successful during her time, therefore, they started to really gain popularity after 1869 and her reputation completely skyrocketed in the 20th century.  Moreover, Mary Shelley was also an English writer and she is best known for the horror novel Frankenstein.

There was a rise in the graph for Jane Austen around 1811 because that was when her novel Sense and Sensibility was published.  However, during this time there was a fall in Mary Shelley’s graph because she had not written any novels yet.  Then around 1820, we see a rise in the graph for Mary Shelley due to the fact that her most famous novel, Frankenstein was published and became popular.  However, Jane Austen had a fall during this time because she had not written anything because in the year 1817 she passed away.  Around 1830, there is rise in the graph for Jane Austen because in 1832, publisher Richard Bentley purchased the remaining copyrights to all of Austen’s novels and, beginning in around December 1832 and January 1833, published them in five illustrated volumes as part of his Standard Novels series.  Mary Shelley and Jane Austen remain pretty stagnant after 1840 because they were not publishing anything because Jane Austen had died quite a few years before and Mary Shelley would do the same around 1851.

After the year 1870 begins, we start to see rise in the graph for Jane Austen because during this year Jane Austen’s nephew, James, publishes his memoirs entitled A Memoir of the Life of Jane Austen and with this publication we see Jane Austen’s life and her works brought to a greater audience, which solidifies her place in literary history.  From then on, her popularity continues to soar and continues to be more popular than Mary Shelley.  Mary Shelley, on the other hand, for years of remaining stagnant has a rise in the graph around 1882 and I am not completely sure why.

Overall, it is interesting to see the rises and falls on this graph between these two famous authors.  It also fascinates me that these writers became famous not during their lifetime but rather after their death.

The Dawn of Evolution and its Rise.

~ Annie Swafford ~ 1 Comment

We all know Charles Darwin, the man who crafted the theory of evolution, one of the most controversial topics that have shaped modern science.  Whether you like it or not he told us that we share a common ancestor with chimpanzees, I hope you fall with the group that thinks it’s cool or really doesn’t care, since chimps are actually quite intelligent and can be capable of sign language (don’t dismiss them as dumb monkeys because maybe in a thousands years they may rule the earth).  Evolution has caused a huge rift within the world as creationism was thought to be the reason for our origin.  Religion was a big part of everyone’s life and when Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, evolution’s use skyrocketed within the year.

In the Ngrams there is one very interesting trend in both the examples. Capitalization will alter your results drastically.  This is especially important for names as “charles darwin” has a low result compared to “Charles Darwin,” even “Evolution” and “evolution” come up with different results.

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Even after On the Origin of Species was published, Darwin’s name has not seen too much of an increase in use until about 1880.  It has however seen a small upward trend after his second book on evolutionary theory, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex was published in 1871. The biggest increase of the use of his name came after his death on April 19th, 1882.

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We should call this contraction the charles darwin! Quick! We need to patent this!

 

Evolution however, has seen its usage grow and grow for many decades as scientists, philosophers and other scholars have become interested in the topic and started researching it themselves.  It is important to keep in mind that the evolution has many different definitions but its rise seems to be no coincidence however, as from 1859 the graph looks almost like the stock market in the roaring twenties.  My comparison isn’t too far fetched as towards 1900, evolution shows a sharp decrease.  Maybe discussion of evolution has started to subside, but it wasn’t too long before the Supreme Court of Tennessee will increase usage of the word to denote humans evolving.

Communication Through Time: Telegraph vs. Telephone

~ Annie Swafford

Something that particularly interests me is modes of communication throughout the ages. From the 19th century through today, we experienced huge advances in technology that helped to sculpt the way we live in this day and age. Two of the biggest forms of communication that arose during the Victorian era were the telegraph and the telephone, which I decided to compare for this assignment.

graphI was surprised at my Ngram chart results because I was expecting there to be a much bigger rise in the telephone from the time it was invented in 1876. Though it did receive wide popularity before 1900, I thought it was interesting to see that the telegraph still exceeded it by a significant amount by the end of the century.

The telegraph’s mentions begin before 1800, when the electric telegraph was first being developed. But its growth begins in 1830, when Samuel Morse perfected this invention for long distance communication with the help of his system called Morse Code. The telegraph became quickly accepted by the public as a faster way of sending and receiving information. Its rise continued consistently as it came into use all around the world until around 1860, when the first transcontinental telegraph line was cerated. This sparked a jump in the chart as telegraph’s came into use worldwide. Something I also noticed was after the telephone was invented, you still see the telegraph going up, but it’s not as consistent anymore and you see more drops in the graph.

In 1876, when the telephone was invented, it automatically made a significant jump in the amount of times it was mentioned in texts, as you see a slight fall in the telegraph. The telephone came into wide use very quickly, with around 10,000 telephones in service by 1878. In the 1880’s, the telephone continues its upward climb with the development of long distance service from the Bell Telephone Company, which was the only telephone company at the time. In the 1890’s, independent phone companies began to pop up all around, giving the Bell Company competition and also supporting the continuous rise of the telephone.

I also wanted to see when exactly the telephone became more popular than the telegraph. In 1900, the telephone’s book mentions skyrocket and exceed that of the telegraph by 1905, a huge jump in just 5 short years. Since then, the telephone has almost continuously risen until modern years while the telegraph has continuously fallen to almost 0% on the Ngram chart.

Overall, I thought it was interesting to see how the amount of mentions in books and texts correlate to popularity. I was surprised to see that mentions of the telephone didn’t rise over that of the telegraph until 1905 because its usage grew so quickly in such a short amount of time. But since the telegraph was so common and prevalent in that society, it took awhile for it to lose that popularity, something that still happens all the time with technology today.

Mini- Project Ngram Comparison

~ Annie Swafford

Poetic vs poetic

The words that I had wanted to compare was Poetic and poetic. I chose these words because I wanted to see how often this word was being use to describe various people ,if there was a relationship, and when the word began to gain traction.

Starting with my results on the graph, you don’t see much of a difference until about the mid-1830s where poetic, with a lowercase, is being used more often, about four times more often at which point, around 1883 it begins to  skyrocket and it is used 5x more than Poetic, with an uppercase. In 1838, Charles Dickens works such as “Oliver Twist” was written and it explains the reason for the increase in the use of that word during that time period. The skyrocket in the 1880s can be attributed to other famous works such as “King Solomon’s Mines”, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, and of course “Sherlock Holmes”.

Based on this research, you are able to infer that if a piece of work comes out during a certain year, that turns out to be a worldwide phenomenon, it will be searched more due to it being a cultural phenomenon, regardless of how brief a time. This represents a positive correlation and evident cause and effect between popularity and search terms. I believe that if a piece of poetry comes out in a few years that has the same impact on our generation this effect will be the same.

I believe that there is such a difference because poetic (lowercase) was used more as an adjective to describe the people who were living around that era. Looking at the data you are also able to tell that the word became more culturally acceptable and began to be used a lot more throughout this time period.