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Assignment #5 Google Ngrams
I decided to compare three of the most celebrated holidays which were the words halloween, christmas, and thanksgiving. I expected Christmas to be the most popular in the 19th Century and even today but was surprised to find that the word Thanksgiving was found in 19th Century book way more than both Christmas and Halloween which were pretty equal.
I first did my research on the word halloween because it was the lowest out of the three. I discovered that the word Halloween dates back to 1745 and is of Christian origin. However, it was also referred to as Allhalloween, All Hallows Eve, or All Hallows’ Day. This was not an American tradition until the mid-19th century, large numbers of new immigrants, especially those fleeing Ireland’s potato famine in the 1840s, helped popularize Halloween. Because N-grams is only showing books published in the United States, this could be the main reason as to why Halloween is not as popular as Thanksgiving, which originated the US.
Thanksgiving began with the migration of what we call “Pilgrims” from England to the “New World” for civil and religious liberty. The Pilgrims were very grateful to receive help from the Indians as they arrived so they declared a three-day feast, starting on December 13, 1621, to thank God and to celebrate with their Indian friends. This became known as the first Thanksgiving festival in America which is now celebrated every fourth Thursday in November. Because of it’s origin in the US, the word “thanksgiving” had the most popularity in books published during the 19th Century.
Christmas, the holiday I thought would be the most popular and most written about, turned out to be nowhere in comparison with Thanksgiving. After having done research I learned that in the first half of the 19th century, Christmas was a very different kind of holiday than it is today. People did not have a set way of celebrating. Christmas was not even an official holiday yet. So, communities around the country honored the dayin different ways. Some observed Christmas as an important Christian religious day, honoring the birth of Jesus. Others celebrated the day with parties, music, drinking and eating. And, some communities did not celebrate the day at all. This explains why Christmas is nowhere near as popular as Thanksgiving.
Works Cited
“The History of Christmas in America.” VOA. Web. 8 Oct. 2015.
“Plimoth Plantation.” Who Were the Pilgrims? Web. 8 Oct. 2015.
“What Is the Origin of America’s Annual Thanksgiving Day?” • ChristianAnswers.Net. Web. 8 Oct. 2015.
Google Ngrams: Musical Instruments
For this assignment, I decided to use the category that I had failed to find information for in the Book Traces assignment: music. I plugged in names of Nineteenth Century composers such as Beethoven, Chopin, and Tchaikovsky, but none of the comparisons were significant enough for me to write about. I then decided to steer away from composers and look more into some instruments. I knew that this time period was incredibly important in the field of music, so I figured the instruments had to have seen some interesting developments. I plugged the words “trumpet,” “flute,” and “piano” into the Ngram Viewer, with the default settings. I saw that at first, the word “trumpet” was significantly more popular than either “flute” or “piano.” Flute was low but stayed fairly consistent until the end of the century. The most interesting increase, however, was definitely in the word “piano.” Its frequency more than tripled between the years 1850 and 1900. It went from least popular of the three to most popular by far. Some quick research explained that throughout the Nineteenth Century, the piano became more and more affordable, as companies began to mass produce the instruments. This allowed for many families to purchase pianos for their homes.
Some research on the flute showed that in about 1847, a man named Theobald Boehm invented a new type of flute that became the premise for the instrument we use today. Toward the end of the century, workshops began to adopt and modify Boehm’s design, and it was used in orchestras all across Europe and America. This explains the increase in the word “flute” from about 1887 to 1898.
As for the trumpet, its graph was fairly consistent throughout, and there was not much information on the Nineteenth Century trumpet alone. I did find out that around that time, similar to the flute and piano, the basis for the modern day trumpet was invented, but it was in the key of F, rather than today’s standard B♭. On the graph around 1810, there is a rather large spike, but I could not find any information that explained it.
I found this to be an interesting assignment because it relies on us making assumptions, which is what historians are forced to do when they are researching various trends on graphs like our Ngrams. This tool could definitely be valuable for anyone who is researching a topic from many years ago. Google has scanned millions of books into its system, which makes the research incredibly accurate. Also, I got to learn about the instruments I enjoy, which was fun.
Works Cited
“The History and Development of the Modern Piano.” Renner USA. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Oct. 2015.
Estrella, Espie. “History of the Trumpet.” About Education. About.com, n.d. Web. 07 Oct. 2015.
“Theobald Boehm (1794-1881).” FluteHistory.com. Flutehistory.com, n.d. Web. 07 Oct. 2015.
“Nineteenth-century Flutes.” FluteHistory.com. Flutehistory.com, n.d. Web. 07 Oct. 2015.
Google Ngram: Undergarments
I’ve always been intrigued in the history of fashion, especially the amount of layers that were worn in previous centuries. From my understanding, women had a strict form of dress in the 19th century. Had you not worn layers of garment and cloth, you were violating what was deemed socially acceptable. With social acceptance came discomfort, for many of the garments were painful to wear.
I decided to focus on the female undergarment, which was not just an impressionable fashion statement but a social construct used to manipulate what women were expected to look like. I find that these examples truly emulate the saying beauty is pain.
I chose corsets, bustles, and crinolines:
I knew little of the terminology behind 19th century clothing so I researched ’19th century fashion’. The corset, probably the most notable article of the three, was worn consistently throughout the century but in different adaptions. The invention of the steam-moulded corset became popular between 1860-1880, created by Edwin Izod (a big surprise that it was developed by a man) (Victoria and Albert Museum, “Crinolines, Crinolettes, Bustles and Corsets from 1860-80”). The rise of corsets during that interval on the graph is presumed to be because of the steam-moulded corset popularity.
From 1890 and beyond, the percentage for corsets shows an increase. Although the garment was still a social construct, the stiff, discomfort of the corset came into question. After the 1890s, more corsets were made with wool and cotton, adjustable straps, and without whalebone, “a sensible rather than attractive image” (Victoria and Albert Museum, “Corsets and Bustles from 1880-90 – the Move from Over-Structured Opulence to the ‘Healthy Corset'”).
The bustle, which is otherwise known as a tournure, was used as an extension of the skirt to create a full silhouette. The graph shows a fairly steady percentage from 1800-1900. Like the corset, the bustle varied in design throughout the century. In the mid-1800s, the bustle was more plump. By the end of the 19th century, clothing was becoming more slender. Some bustles had trains extending from the dress as part of the fashion. The declination of bustles on the graph could be due to the removal of layers and drapery in fashion (Thomas, “Bustles”).
The crinoline was another garment designed to fill out the dress. The cage crinoline was popularized in “the late 1850s and early 1860s,” but because of difficulty with the spring steel and immobility, the design was no longer favorable (Victoria and Albert Museum, “Corsets & Crinolines in Victorian Fashion”). There is clear indication of this decline around 1865 on the graph.
I wanted to continue with a Victorian England setting, but I was curious what another corpus would show. The German percentages were far more drastic. Bustles showed no popularity, while corsets appear to have had rising popularity in the 1890s and the crinoline shows fluctuation but was not introduced until 1860 on the graph. While I did no research on German garments during this era, I found the differences interesting! 
Works Cited:
Thomas, Pauline Weston. ” Bustles.” Bustles. Fashion History. Web. 7 Oct. 2015.
“Crinolines, Crinolettes, Bustles and Corsets from 1860-80.” , Online Museum, Web Team, Webmaster@vam.ac.uk. Victoria and Albert Museum. Web. 7 Oct. 2015.
“Corsets and Bustles from 1880-90 – the Move from Over-Structured Opulence to the ‘Healthy Corset'”, Online Museum, Web Team, Webmaster@vam.ac.uk. Victoria and Albert Museum. Web. 7 Oct. 2015.
“Corsets & Crinolines in Victorian Fashion.” , Online Museum, Web Team, Webmaster@vam.ac.uk. Victoria and Albert Museum. Web. 7 Oct. 2015.
Google Ngrams: An Etymological Study
I don’t tell many people this, so consider yourselves lucky. I have my super-secret time machine whirring to life in the garage, so why don’t you join me on a trip? We can travel back into the 19th century to investigate three common words, how their usage began or changed during those hundred years, and potential reasons why this was the case.
After we hide the Delorean, our work can begin. I chose musket (or musquet), anesthesia (or anaesthesia), and scientist, hoping that these three words would provide some interesting results from Google Ngrams. I set the years for 1800 to 1900, and settled on a smoothing of 5. The lower the smoothing number, the more jagged of a graph would be produced.
Musket is a word that refers to a type of infantry gun, and it had French origins from the 16th century. There were many spellings throughout the centuries, which is why I included the most popular alternate spelling. From 1800 to around the start of the Civil War, its usage almost doubled. In this same period of time, musquet was about 1/4 as popular as musket by 1800, and it had basically stopped being used by 1860. This coincides with a sharp decline in musket after 1860 as well. According to Oed.com, musket was reserved for obsolete weapons, while the more common rifle was adopted for contemporary firearms.
Next, I wanted to find a word whose usage began during the 19th century, and I settled upon anesthesia, which is generally spelled anaesthesia in Britain. Both versions were included in the search, and it is derived from Latin. Prior to 1840, there is practically no use of anaesthesia, yet thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary, we can see the use increased greatly for the remainder of the 19th century, peaking in the 1880s. The American version, anesthesia, slowly grew in usage towards 1900, but was still well below the British spelling. Of course, this word coincided with better medical technology, especially during the Civil War in the United States.
Finally, I chose another word, scientist, which I expected to rise in usage throughout the century. The slope of the graph grows slowly from the 1860s, possibly in response to Charles Darwin, who published On the Origin of Species in 1859. The Oxford Dictionary helps elucidate the origin of the word scientist, as W. Whewell stated in 1834:
…the want of any name by which we can designate the students of the knowledge of the material world collectively. We are informed that this difficulty was felt very oppressively by the members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at their meetings..in the last three summers… Philosophers was felt to be too wide and too lofty a term,..; some ingenious gentleman proposed that, by analogy with artist, they might form scientist…
More succinctly, in 1834 a gentleman compared art and science, and if someone who practices art is an artist, then a practitioner of science should be a scientist. This is how scientist became a word, and Ngrams shows its usage grew by about 10 times from 1870 to 1900.
Ok, its time to go…you get to choose the time machine destination this time, though.
Toilet Paper
The Dawn of Evolution and its Rise.
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.
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.
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.
Google Ngram: Science and Religion
Google Ngrams is a wonderful tool because you can notice not only the frequency of words in books but the tendency of them as the time goes by. But one thing needs to be kept in mind, some words can be used with different meanings.
For the first graph I chose “Jesus” and “Science”. Over the time the term “science” starts to gain popularity. One of the theories of why this happened is because of Darwin’s publication On the Origin of Species (1859). But at that point science and religion still had a kind of harmony and could still be seen as one field. After 1870 some scientists objected to the involvement of clegymen in the sciences. Consequently this created two different fields and not only one, each having its own experts. Thereat the popularity of science started to increase not being in the shadow of religion anymore.
As time goes by and science starts to emerge and a lot of theories start to take place. For example, “Creationism” and “Evolutionism”. You can notice that “Evolutionism” starts to appear more after 1859 when On the Origin of Species was published. As both theories evolve they start to appear more and more. At the end of the century “Evolutionism” is so popular that it surpasses the mentions of “Creationism” by far. The difference of mentions in this case can show us a trend during the century, for example theories and its popularity making Google Ngrams a great tool for analysis.
Comparing History and Sports with Google Ngram Viewer
For my first graph, i used Google Ngrams to visualize the usage of the names of three legendary presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. I did so as a way to view the popularity of the presidents during or after their tenures, and to compare their legacies decades after they left office.
Initially, the data seems a bit peculiar because the line representing president Lincoln has a minor spike right by the y-axis. Aside from that, it appears that the largest spike on the entire graph came on president Lincoln’s line during his tenure. It is much larger than the spikes during and after Jefferson and Washington’s tenures, respectively. This is probably due to the rising population of the United States during the 19th century and the increasing number of literate minds. However decades after all of their tenures Lincoln still has a higher percentage of appearances than Jefferson and Washington. Because of this it can be concluded that Lincoln had a larger overall influence on our country, probably because of the obvious social issues happening during his tenure.
My second graph displays the usage of the words baseball, cricket and soccer during the 19th century.
The line for baseball is very reasonable since the sport wasn’t even played professionally until the 1880s. The line for football can also be trusted, but obviously the football being referred to is what Americans now refer to as soccer. The line for cricket cannot be seen as reliable in the realm of sports though, because saying the word cricket could be in reference to the sport or the insect. Therefore to conclude, at the turn of the 20th century it was not clear whether cricket or football (soccer) was the more popular sport, but it is clear that baseball was still relatively unpopular in comparison.
Google Ngram
I used the Branch Collective website to choose words that I thought may show interesting correlations regarding their presence in texts throughout the nineteenth century. For my first Ngram, I looked at evolution and ethics. For my second Ngram, I looked at imperialism and nationalism.
The first chart (evolution and ethics) shows an increase in the use of both evolution and ethics later in the century, around 1870. This makes a lot of sense because Charles Darwin began to publish his theories around this time, and there was a lot of talk and controversy surrounding evolution. Many debates on evolution took place around this time, such as the 1860 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Oxford. Ethics played a large role in debates surrounding evolution and God.
The second chart (imperialism and nationalism) shows an increase in both words during the second half of the century, with a huge spike in “imperialism” at the tail end, closest to 1900. This makes a lot of sense because the Second Boer War started in 1899 and was marked by an increase in feelings of nationalism and the “New Imperialism,” along with racism and genocidal thinking. This was part of the “Scramble for Africa” among European nations.
(source: Branch Collective Topic Clusters – http://www.branchcollective.org)
Google Ngram Viewer is very helpful in locating trends within literature of digitized books from specific time periods. However, as noted in the blog post by Ted Underwood, there is a lack of context which can lead to misinterpretation or misinformation. That is why websites like Branch Collective can be helpful in understanding these correlations and trends.