[Ads-l] Antedating of "Infrared"

Tue Sep 8 15:45:31 UTC 2020

I believe that the Almanach de Gotha did for European noble families what
DeBrett's Peerage did for England.

The NYPL record indicates that the last edition was issued in 1944;

Almanach de Gotha : annuaire généalogique, diplomatique et statistique.
<http://catalog.nypl.org/search~S1?/cAPC+%28Almanach+de+Gotha%29/capc+almanach+de+gotha/-3%2C-1%2C0%2CE/frameset&FF=capc+almanach+de+gotha&7%2C%2C327>

Gotha : J. Perthes.  1944

The NYPL also shows that the publication was revived in England a couple of
decades ago.  (Note the editorial comment, though.)

Almanach de Gotha : genealogy.
<http://catalog.nypl.org/search~S1?/cAPC+%28Almanach+de+Gotha%29/capc+almanach+de+gotha/-3%2C-1%2C0%2CE/frameset&FF=capc+almanach+de+gotha&2%2C%2C327>
   Standard ed.
London : Almanach de Gotha,

1998

v. 1, pts. 1 & 2 (Sovereign houses of Europe and South America); and: v. 2
(Non-sovereign princely and ducal houses of Europe).

 This is a controversial renewal of the original publication by a
commercial enterprise "touting themselves as the true successors to the
reputable almanach" (Wikipedia, accessed Jan. 22, 2008).

Anyway, if anyone has access to this, or if an earlier edition has been
digitized, and if Vignaud Dupuy de Saint-Florent was a sprig of nobility,
by adoption or otherwise, then he might be found there.

The family does not seem to be in the Annuaire de la noblesse de France.
v.57 1901, (HathiTrust) but this is evidently limited to the highest of the
high, and mere generals who have been nobilized for distinguished service
must use the back door.

GAT

(a recovering reference librarian)

On Mon, Sep 7, 2020 at 7:25 PM Chris Waigl <chris at lascribe.net> wrote:

> Hi Fred,
>
> This is great - the electromagnetic spectrum is something I teach, and
> having some historical texture to the topic helps.
>
> I poked at the titles you cited in Google Books a little more and found
> quite a few mentions of M. de Saint-Florent in the tables of
> contents, mostly for a color photography process he apparently invented. He
> shows up as "E. de Saint-Florent" and "Lieut.-Col. de Saint-Florent". I
> then looked in the catalogue of the French national library, but the only
> name that is from approximately the right time is Alfred Vignaud Dupuy de
> Saint-Florent, a medical doctor born in 1868 who wrote a treatise about I
> think Huntington's disease or a similar neurological affliction ("La chorée
> congénitale"). "Alfred" would be the (first) given name, and "Vignaud Dupuy
> de Saint-Florent" the family name. Big-ass nobility. The family seems to
> still exist. There's, going backwards, a Napoleonian general
> called François Dupuy de Saint-Florent 1772-1838 who, according to this bio
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__nieuletalentoursenlimousin.fr_archive_militaires-2Dfrancois-2Ddupuy-2Dde-2Dst-2Dflorent_&d=DwIFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v2Wtu7DQZxSBMSJv-oEMNg&m=Kt3vaUhGH8UuqZmP8zxTHJVomOMN12sxDnGlvLh3FXU&s=vvJp38TKhbwhEKSX67M6dFsGqyikBXBl-waihesZOLY&e=
> adopted a nephew called Antoine Télesphore Vignaud, and I guess it's his
> descendents who go by the mouthful Vignaud Dupuy de Saint-Florent.
>
> Anyhoo, none of this tells us who E. was. This page
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.mesarchitecture.org_infrared.html&d=DwIFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v2Wtu7DQZxSBMSJv-oEMNg&m=Kt3vaUhGH8UuqZmP8zxTHJVomOMN12sxDnGlvLh3FXU&s=K_zKOvguWYY5BWAKvCRsRa9msiy7Bmmzm0qeGSF0u6s&e=
> follows your footsteps,
> probably, but must have some extra sources: "The phrase infra-rouge was
> translated into English as “infrared” in 1874, in a translation of an
> article by Vignaud Dupuy de Saint-Florent (1830-1907), an engineer within
> the French army, who attained the rank of lieutenant colonel and who
> pursued pictures as a pastime."
>
> Chris
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 7, 2020 at 7:13 AM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > The OED's first use of the term "infrared" is dated 1881.  The letter
> > below, which I am not sure where I got it from, traces it back to 1874.
> >
> > Fred Shapiro
> >
> >
> >
> > In “Herschel and the Puzzle of Infrared” (May–June 2012), Jack White
> > mentions that it is not known who coined the term “infrared.” This
> mystery
> > caught my attention. A Google Books search for “infra-red” finds two
> > articles published in April 1874, both of which use the term in the
> context
> > of Edmond Becquerel’s treatise on light. In that work, La Lumière (1867,
> > vol. 1, p. 141), the French infra-rouge is used. One of the articles
> > appeared in The Photographic News for Amateur Photographers (18:176), and
> > is by M. de St. Florent; the other is uncredited but appeared in The
> > British Journal of Photography (21:160) and is attributed to de St.
> Florent
> > elsewhere in the volume. I have not been able to trace de St. Florent’s
> > full name, but he published contemporaneously in Bulletin de la Société
> > française de photographie. This author appears to be the coiner of
> > “infra-red,” having translated it from French.
> >
> > There are two curious sidelights to this story: Becquerel was the father
> > of Henri Becquerel, for whom the unit of radioactivity was named; and the
> > term “ultraviolet” was coined by William Herschel’s son John Herschel in
> > 1840.
> >
> > Gary Rosenberg
> >
> > Academy of Natural Sciences
> >
> > Drexel University
> >
> > Philadelphia, PA
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society -
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.americandialect.org&d=DwIFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v2Wtu7DQZxSBMSJv-oEMNg&m=Kt3vaUhGH8UuqZmP8zxTHJVomOMN12sxDnGlvLh3FXU&s=g1zuutvOfr60H7ZcsIoRVAxXLwHfcGJ1CiQAP48slLI&e=
> >
>
>
> --
> Chris Waigl . chris.waigl at gmail.com . chris at lascribe.net
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__eggcorns.lascribe.net&d=DwIFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v2Wtu7DQZxSBMSJv-oEMNg&m=Kt3vaUhGH8UuqZmP8zxTHJVomOMN12sxDnGlvLh3FXU&s=Kh4uhkNMeatO92UHezzxjcuw9Q1K4XJpyOvT5soVD1o&e=
> .
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__chryss.eu&d=DwIFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v2Wtu7DQZxSBMSJv-oEMNg&m=Kt3vaUhGH8UuqZmP8zxTHJVomOMN12sxDnGlvLh3FXU&s=3Jt9Bs197yxphutz1NsS7FK0eQSdIAxMcfHRdiFxR-A&e=
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society -
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.americandialect.org&d=DwIFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=v2Wtu7DQZxSBMSJv-oEMNg&m=Kt3vaUhGH8UuqZmP8zxTHJVomOMN12sxDnGlvLh3FXU&s=g1zuutvOfr60H7ZcsIoRVAxXLwHfcGJ1CiQAP48slLI&e=
>

-- 
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998.

But when aroused at the Trump of Doom / Ye shall start, bold kings, from
your lowly tomb. . .
L. H. Sigourney, "Burial of Mazeen", Poems.  Boston, 1827, p. 112

The Trump of Doom -- also known as The Dunghill Toadstool.  (Here's a
picture of his great-grandfather.)
http://www.parliament.uk/worksofart/artwork/james-gillray/an-excrescence---a-fungus-alias-a-toadstool-upon-a-dunghill/3851

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