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The Perversity of Things

Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientification

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Hugo Gernsback
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Grant Wythoff

Grant Wythoff presents a wide array of texts by famed writer, publisher, and inventor Hugo Gernsback that were foundational both for science fiction and emerging media studies. Through painstaking research and extensive annotations and commentary, Wythoff aims to reverse the widespread misunderstanding of Gernsback within the history of science fiction criticism, reintroducing us to Gernsback and the origins of science fiction.

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Recent Activity

  • @ManifoldScholar

    The convenient eye holes in Hugo Gernsback's Isolator will allow you to continue enjoying Manifold's open-access ti… https://t.co/xPRrQh4eYh

    March 11, 2020
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    The #Isolator is one of the most popular products in Manifold's #PerversityofThings boutique https://t.co/0eI9AnmtIi

    February 20, 2019
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    Whoa! I need one! @ManifoldScholar #perversityofthings @gwijthoff #dissertation #dissertationdistraction… https://t.co/YoC5Mdqrcm

    February 19, 2019
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    Thrilled by @robinsloan's kind words for @gwijthoff's #PerversityOfThings and Manifold, which he calls "a great mat… https://t.co/PMnU9nY8Qf

    February 15, 2019
  • Text Added

    The Perversity of Things: Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientifiction

    April 03, 2017
  • Project Kickoff

    A Manifold project is born!

    March 21, 2017

Resources

Resource Collections

  • Issues

    Resource Collection
  • Covers

    Resource Collection
2 Total Collections

Single Resources

  • Image

    Cover of Science and Invention 9, no. 8 (December 1921)

  • Pdf

    Radio News, vol. 8, no. 3, September 1926

  • Image

    Title page from Hugo Gernsback's Radio for All (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1922)

  • Image

    Cover of Science and Invention 9, no. 12 (April 1922)

  • Image

    Cover of Modern Electrics 1, no. 10 (January 1909)

  • Pdf

    The Electrical Experimenter, vol. 1, no. 1, May 1913

  • Pdf

    Science and Invention, vol. 10, no. 6, October 1922

  • Image

    Cover of Radio News 4, no. 8 (February 1923)

  • Image

    Cover of The Electrical Experimenter 5, no. 1 (May 1917)

  • Image

    Cover of Television News 1, no. 3 (July–August 1931)

126 Total Resources

Table of Contents

  • Front Matter
    • Cover
    • Title Page
    • Copyright Page
    • Dedication
    • Chronological Contents
    • Thematic Contents
    • How to Use This Book
    • Acknowledgments
    • Introduction
      • “up-to-date technic”: Hugo Gernsback’s Pulp Media Theory
      • “a perfect Babel of voices”: Communities of Inquiry and Wireless Publics
      • “’phone and code”: Dynamophone, Radioson, and Other Emerging Media
      • “certain future instrumentalities”: The Mineral Proficiencies of Tinkering
      • “we exploit the future”: Scientifiction’s Debut
  • Part I. Tinkering
    • A New Interrupter (1905)
    • The Dynamophone (1908)
    • The Born and the Mechanical Inventor (1911)
    • The Radioson Detector (1914)
    • What to Invent (1916)
    • The Perversity of Things (1916)
    • Thomas A. Edison Speaks to You (1919)
    • Human Progress (1922)
    • Results of the $500.00 Prize Contest: Who Will Save the Radio Amateur? (1923)
    • The Isolator (1925)
    • The Detectorium (1926)
    • New Radio “Things” Wanted (1927)
  • Part II. History and Theory of Media
    • The Aerophone Number (1908)
    • Why “Radio Amateur News”Is Here (1919)
    • Science and Invention (1920)
    • Learn and Work While You Sleep (1921)
    • The “New” Science and Invention (1923)
    • Are We Intelligent? (1923)
  • Part III. Broadcast Regulation
    • The Wireless Joker (1908)
    • The Wireless Association of America (1909)
    • The Roberts Wireless Bill (1910)
    • The Alexander Wireless Bill (1912)
    • Wireless and the Amateur: A Retrospect (1913)
    • Sayville (1915)
    • War and the Radio Amateur (1917)
    • Silencing America’s Wireless (1917)
    • Amateur Radio Restored (1919)
    • The Future of Radio (1919)
    • Wired versus Space Radio (1927)
  • Part IV. Wireless
    • [Editorials] (1909)
    • From The Wireless Telephone (1911)
    • From A Treatise on Wireless Telegraphy (1913)
    • The Future of Wireless (1916)
    • From Radio for All (1922)
    • Radio Broadcasting (1922)
    • Is Radio at a Standstill? (1926)
    • Edison and Radio (1926)
    • Why the Radio Set Builder? (1927)
    • Radio Enters into a New Phase (1927)
    • The Short-Wave Era (1928)
  • Part V. Television
    • Television and the Telephot (1909)
    • A Radio-Controlled Television Plane (1924)
    • After Television—What? (1927)
    • Television Technique (1931)
  • Part VI. Sound
    • Hearing through Your Teeth (1916)
    • Grand Opera by Wireless (1919)
    • The Physiophone: Music for the Deaf (1920)
    • The “Pianorad” (1926)
  • Part VII. Scientifiction
    • Signaling to Mars (1909)
    • Our Cover (1913)
    • Phoney Patent Offizz: Bookworm’s Nurse (1915)
    • Imagination versus Facts (1916)
    • Interplanetarian Wireless (1920)
    • An American Jules Verne (1920)
    • 10,000 Years Hence (1922)
    • Predicting Future Inventions (1923)
    • The Dark Age of Science (1925)
    • A New Sort of Magazine (1926)
    • The Lure of Scientifiction (1926)
    • Fiction versus Facts (1926)
    • Editorially Speaking (1926)
    • Imagination and Reality (1926)
    • How to Write “Science” Stories (1930)
    • Science Fiction versus Science Faction (1930)
    • Wonders of the Machine Age (1931)
    • Reasonableness in Science Fiction (1932)
  • Part VIII. Selected Fiction
    • Ralph 124C 41+, Part 3 (1911)
    • Baron Münchhausen’s New Scientific Adventures, Part 5: “Münchhausen Departs for the Planet Mars” (1915)
    • The Magnetic Storm (1918)
    • The Electric Duel (1927)
    • The Killing Flash (1929)
  • Back Matter
    • Index

Metadata

  • edition
    1
  • isbn
    978-1-4529-5842-2
  • publisher
    University of Minnesota Press
  • publisher place
    Minneapolis, MN
  • restrictions
    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
  • rights
    Copyright 2016 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
  • rights holder
    Regents of the University of Minnesota
  • rights territory
    World
  • series number
    52
  • series title
    Electronic Mediations
  • version
    1.0
  • doi
    https://doi.org/10.5749/9781452958422
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