On July 28th, members of the Ullage Group took a field trip to Bannerman Castle, organized by Dr. Mamie Caton.           For train passengers, a partial and too-brief view of Bannerman Castle can be had just south of Beacon, NY.  The castle is situated on a small island once called Pollepel […]

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The computer is a useful tool.  We all use it regularly.  The fact that I post here should make it clear to the impartial that I have no beef with these gizmos. But this is a puritanical culture; and many of our fellow citizens view the non-digital with the same dogmatic intolerance with which the Pilgrims […]

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Facts Can Be Fun! Interactive gadgets and gizmos to aid learning have been popular for decades, perhaps longer. Often used for the basics – ABCs, vocabulary, numbers, math, music, spelling, verb conjugation, and foreign languages, for example – they have been packaged as calculators and electronic devices, paper wheel charts, games, puzzles, wooden blocks, and […]

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JOHN COOPER.

John Cooper was a little boy, whose father and mother lived in a cottage on one side of a village green. He was his parents’ only child, so that he had no brothers nor sisters to play with. But he had a dog of which he was very fond, and he used sometimes to play with other children on the green. Tom Jones was one of the boys that played with John Cooper. One day he asked John Cooper to go for a long walk with him, instead of going to school. John at first would not consent, but at last he gave way and went with Tom, taking Carlo with him.

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The “Movement Print” offered a new pleasure for the discerning stereoscope owner. You inserted it, blinked your eyes rapidly in alternation, and enjoyed a brief moving picture of somebody else working. I have no idea when these were produced. I’d like to know what other subjects, if any, were chosen. (Posted by Doug Skinner)

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Sometime after many debits, credits, and payments in trade and cash for dry goods and groceries were recorded in an 1857 ledger book, one of the early residents of Georgetown Township in Ottowa County, Michigan, made thrifty use of it in pursuit of her literary ambitions.* Beautiful ink script chronicling purchases of shoes, flour, candy, […]

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We’re happy to report that the Ullage Group now owns a functional 1932 Violet Ray Generator.  One of your founders (Doug) and charter member Dr. Mamie Caton bought the device at an antique store in upstate New York.  We tested it before purchase; the spectacle of four clueless adults trying to work a potentially broken […]

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Here is a link to our new flickr page with 3D photos from our first event, “Five Sides of a Machine.” The photos can be viewed with standard red and cyan 3D glasses. Stereoscopic photography by Mick Andreano. (Posted by Anthony Matt)

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Our first event took place on the season’s first snowfall, surely an omen of some kind. A few dozen truth-seekers braved the crystals to see what we were up to. After finding niches for our brood of projectors, Doug stepped into the lights to deliver an informal keynote speechlet (given above). Anthony followed with a […]

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What is ullage? It has several meanings: deficiency, lack, the air at the top of a bottle, the sediment after the bottle is emptied, the fumes in an engine. The Ullage Group takes it as an emblem of the other part: the contrarian, paradoxical, lost, unpopular, and forgotten. Our founders, Anthony Matt and Doug Skinner, have been […]

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