At just 18 years old, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley created one of the earliest and most iconic examples of science fiction in her novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. The novel tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, who became obsessed with science and at university tried to create the perfect being from body parts. When he ‘infuses a spark of being’ into the creature however, he is disgusted by it and flees. The creature is left to try to make sense of the world; feeling betrayed by its creator, it seeks revenge on Frankenstein.
Shelley famously brought Frankenstein to life while abroad with friends. In June 1816, she and her husband Percy Shelley stayed with Lord Byron and his physician John Polidori at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva. It was a ‘wet, ungenial summer’ according to Mary, with long, unusually dark days. Unbeknownst to Byron and his party, the unseasonable weather over this ‘Year without a Summer’ was caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia the previous year, causing a significant change in the global climate.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, portrait by Richard Rothwell, 1840. Source: Wikipedia
Sat around the fire, Byron proposed that each of the party should write a ghost story. Shelley later recounted in her 1831 introduction to Frankenstein how one evening, the group discussed the boundaries of life and death, that ‘[p]erhaps a corpse would be re-animated, galvanism had given token of such things’. When they retired to bed, she recalls having a ‘waking dream’:
‘I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion.’
Galvanism
Daughter of pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and radical philosopher William Godwin, Mary Shelley grew up surrounded by the leading scientists, writers and politicians of the 18th Century. She took a keen interest in science, reading widely and attending lectures on the cutting-edge scientific theories of the day. During this period, debates were raging about the boundaries between life and death, and whether such matters should be probed in the first place.
Shelley was aware of the debates taking place about the so called ‘life-principle’ between William Abernethy and William Lawrence at the Royal College of Surgeons about the origins of the human life force. Abernethy argued that life was a kind of vital ‘spark’ which was ‘superadded’ to the material body to animate it: a body that powers up once the ‘spark’ is added, like a clock starting to tick after it’s been wound-up. In contrast, Lawrence argued that life was within the body itself, produced simply through its functioning parts: part of the same whole, trying to extricate life and the body is like extracting egg from a baked cake.
Linked to this debate was the newly discovered force of electricity – and experiments to test whether it could bring the dead to life. Luigi Galvani, a surgeon at the University of Bologna, was experimenting with animals and electricity when in January 1781, he dissected a frog near a static electricity machine and touched a scalpel to the frog’s leg, which jerked. After further experiments Galvani was convinced that the muscle tissues had spasmed due to contact with the electrical current. Galvani didn’t announce his discovery until 1791 when he published an essay entitled De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari Commentarius (Commentary on the Effect of Electricity on Muscular Motion). This essay argued that animal tissue contained an inherent force which was a form of electricity that flowed through the nerves to muscle tissue, Galvani named this force ‘animal electricity’.
Frog-pistol 1985-1739
To demonstrate the stimulation of nerves in a frog’s leg, this Pistolet, or `Frog Pistol’ was devised by electro-physiologist Emil Heinrich du Bois-Reymond. Du Bois-Reymond’s book Investigations of Animal Electricity laid out his theory of bioelectricity: muscle was made up of electric molecules. We now know that these are sodium, potassium and other ions.
Galvani’s nephew, Giovanni Aldini, took these experiments further by animating human corpses with electricity. He toured Europe with these demonstrations; the most famous of these displays of galvanism took place at the infamous Newgate Prison in London in 1803. Until 1832, it was illegal to procure human cadavers for dissection except from the bodies of executed murderers, making Aldini’s use of executed criminals at Newgate the only legal route for his public experiments.
Aldini inserted metal rods into the corpse of George Foster. The Newgate Calendar recounts that ‘the jaws of the deceased criminal began to quiver, and the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye was actually opened. In the subsequent part of the process the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion.’ The experiment created a public sensation, with widespread reporting in newspapers such as The Times. People thought that this was the start of technology that might be able to bring the dead fully back to life, a shocking and troubling concept. This was indeed the closest men of science had come to bringing the dead back to life and it had a lasting impact on Mary Shelley who appears to depict electricity as the ‘spark of being’ that Frankenstein uses to bring the creature to life.
The Royal Humane Society and resuscitation
Apparatus for resuscitating the drowned, England, 1774-1800
Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died from a post-natal infection a few days after giving birth to her. This would prompt Shelley’s enduring fascination with motherhood, birth and death which is central to Frankenstein. She was also aware that her mother was resuscitated after jumping into the Thames in 1795 by volunteers from The Royal Humane Society. The society was established by two doctors, William Hawes and Thomas Cogan in 1774 and was originally named the Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned.
It published information on how to resuscitate people with specially designed equipment which pumped air into the lungs and awarded medals to those who had attempted resuscitation engraved with the society’s motto ‘Peradventure a little spark may yet lie hid’
This apparatus for resuscitating the drowned is from the Worcestershire branch of the Humane Society and is similar to the one which may have been used to revive Mary Wollstonecraft. It contains equipment for forcing air into the lungs via a leather balloon and tubing. It also includes three stopper phials which contained brandy and a volatile alkali, presumably to act as stimulants.
Shelley took inspiration for Victor Frankenstein from a friend of her father’s, Humphrey Davy, a famous chemist who had carried out pioneering experimental work on electricity. Davy’s lectures were famous and hundreds of people, including many women, would cram into lecture theatres to see him speak and demonstrate experiments.
‘Chemical Lectures’. Designed & Published by Thomas Rowlandson. Circa 1810. Etching
This etching shows a young Humphry Davy giving a lecture and demonstrating chemical experiments at the Surrey Institution in London. Mary Shelley attended lectures such as these in both London and Bath- she went on to borrow some of the phrases verbatim from Davy’s lectures and book to use in her novel.
In 1802 Davy wrote Discourse, Introductory to Course of Letters on Chemistry which Shelley read before writing Frankenstein. Chemistry, writes Davy, has bestowed on humankind,
‘powers which may be almost called creative, which have enabled him to modify and change the beings surrounding him, and by his experiments to interrogate nature with power, not simply as a scholar, passive and seeking only to understand her operations, but rather as a master, active with his own instruments.’
These words also reflect Frankenstein’s desire to use science to actively alter and ‘master’ nature.
But in pursuing the creation of the ‘ideal’ being, and selecting ‘his features as beautiful’, he is appalled by the ‘monstrosity’ of his creation. Frankenstein overreaches in his scientific endeavours, taking on a role of creator which many of Shelley’s contemporaries believed was reserved for God only.
Frankenstein has become a reference point whenever science intercedes with the processes of nature. For example, Robert Edwards, a pioneer of in vitro fertilisation from the 1960s said in 1989 that ‘Whatever today’s embryologists may do, Frankenstein or Faust or Jekyll will have foreshadowed, looming over every biological debate’. When he and his colleagues initially reported they had successfully fertilised a human egg in a laboratory, the New York Times report ran under the headline ‘The Frankenstein myth becomes reality’.
‘In scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder’ – Mary shelley in Frankenstein
Frankenstein endures because it incorporates so many aspects of what it means to be human and to be alive. It explores the fundamental questions of a period of rapid scientific and societal change, and questions of scientific ethics, which seem more pertinent than ever with the rise of Artificial Intelligence, gene-editing technology and human-made environmental destruction.
In the two centuries since Frankenstein was published, the creature has often been depicted as monstrous and stupid, but that is not how Shelley originally portrays it. Hers is a sensitive, emotional and intelligent being, made murderous by inhumane rejection and abandonment: ‘I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.’
Today, we should remember Mary Shelley’s most prescient message: our innovations are only as virtuous or as evil as we make them.
In this article, we will look at the basics of WordPress custom taxonomies and how to master them using the CyberSEO Pro and RSS Retriever plugins.
What are custom taxonomies?
WordPress taxonomies are mechanisms to categorize and sort the content on your site. Think of them as an advanced filing system that goes beyond the basic ‘categories’ and ‘tags.’ By using Custom Taxonomies, you can design a more intricate, relevant categorization framework, especially for custom post types. For example, if you have a custom post type for “Books,” you can have custom taxonomies such as “Topics” to further sort them into genres like Adventure, Romance, Horror, etc.
Why custom taxonomies are useful
Custom Taxonomies give you the granularity you need, allowing for detailed organization schemes. You can take a custom post type like “Recipes” to the next level by adding specific taxonomies such as “Courses” and “Ingredients.”
The structure can go deeper with hierarchical taxonomies. For example, if you have a taxonomy for “Fiction,” it can encompass sub-categories like Adventure, Romance, and Horror, giving you a nested, intuitive structure for content.
Ease of management comes standard with Custom Taxonomies as they have their own dedicated menus in the WordPress admin panel. This makes it straightforward to manage even the most complex categorization systems.
The benefits extend to clients as well, especially those who frequently add new content. Custom Taxonomies can be designed to suit the intuitive nature of a business, making the data input process smoother.
Selecting post types
When you are setting up feeds for syndication, CyberSEO Pro allows you to choose from a drop-down menu for “Post types.” This list includes all post types defined either by the WordPress theme or by other active plugins like WooCommerce.
Additional custom taxonomies block
Once a custom post type with its own taxonomies is selected, an additional “Custom Taxonomies” block appears in the settings. This block displays all the taxonomy names followed by text fields where you can enter their values.
Shortcode support
Starting with version 10.115, CyberSEO Pro, along with the RSS Retriever plugin, supports post template shortcodes like %post_tags%, %xml_tags[name]%, %custom_fields[name]%, etc. This allows you to automatically populate your custom taxonomies when syndicating posts from different sources.
Example
Let’s say you’re importing an XML file where each item follows this structure:
In this scenario, assume you’re creating WordPress posts with a custom post type that has a custom taxonomy named “Product brand”. You’d like to populate this taxonomy using the <brand> field from the XML file.
To do so, navigate to the “Custom taxonomies” settings block for your feed in CyberSEO Pro or RSS Retriever, and simply input the following shortcode in the “Product brand” field:
%xml_tags[brand]%
This shortcode will automatically retrieve the value between the <brand> tags from each XML element and populate the “Product brand” custom taxonomy when the post is syndicated.
By using this shortcode functionality, you can streamline your content syndication process while ensuring that all relevant custom taxonomies are populated accurately.
PHP code snippets
For advanced users, custom taxonomies can also be assigned using custom PHP code. For example, the following code will assign “Galaxy Z Fold5” to the custom taxonomy “model”:
$post['custom_taxonomies']['model'] = 'Galaxy Z Fold5';
In the example above, the model custom taxonomy name must be defined for the selected post type.
Additional tools
While CyberSEO Pro and RSS Retriever offer robust capabilities for handling WordPress custom post types and taxonomies defined by your active theme or other plugins, it’s important to note that these plugins are not designed to create or manage these custom elements. They excel at importing and syndicating content within the framework you’ve established but leave the actual structuring to other specialized tools.
For users looking to easily create and manage custom post types and taxonomies, we highly recommend using the free plugin Custom Post Type UI. This tool provides an intuitive interface for registering and managing these custom elements, making it a perfect companion to CyberSEO Pro and RSS Retriever. Together, these plugins offer a comprehensive solution for both the structure and content of your WordPress site.
Analysis of the Key Points
Custom taxonomies in WordPress are advanced filing systems that allow for more intricate categorization and sorting of content on a website. They provide granularity and detailed organization, making it easy to create a relevant categorization framework, especially for custom post types.
The benefits of custom taxonomies include ease of management, as they have their own dedicated menus in the WordPress admin panel. This makes it straightforward to manage even complex categorization systems. They also make the data input process smoother for clients who frequently add new content.
CyberSEO Pro and RSS Retriever plugins provide support for custom taxonomies by allowing users to select post types and populate custom taxonomies automatically using shortcodes. For more advanced users, custom taxonomies can be assigned using custom PHP code.
While CyberSEO Pro and RSS Retriever are robust tools for importing and syndicating content, they do not create or manage custom post types and taxonomies. For easy creation and management of custom post types and taxonomies, it is recommended to use the free plugin Custom Post Type UI.
Long-term Implications and Future Developments
The use of custom taxonomies in WordPress allows for more precise categorization and organization of content, making it easier for website administrators and visitors to find relevant information. As websites continue to grow and offer more diverse content, the ability to customize taxonomies will become increasingly important. Custom taxonomies can help streamline content management processes and improve the user experience by providing intuitive navigation and filtering options.
In the future, we can expect further advancements in the management and customization of taxonomies in WordPress. Plugins like Custom Post Type UI may continue to evolve, offering even more intuitive interfaces for creating and managing custom taxonomies. Additionally, there may be developments in automation tools that can analyze content and suggest appropriate taxonomies based on machine learning algorithms.
Actionable Advice
1. Implement Custom Taxonomies: Assess your website’s content and consider implementing custom taxonomies to improve categorization and organization. Identify areas where custom taxonomies can provide better granularity and structure.
2. Utilize CyberSEO Pro and RSS Retriever: If you are using CyberSEO Pro and RSS Retriever plugins, take advantage of their support for custom taxonomies. Explore the options for selecting post types and populating custom taxonomies using shortcodes. Experiment with different configurations to automate the syndication process.
3. Consider Custom Post Type UI: If you need to create and manage custom post types and taxonomies, consider using the free plugin Custom Post Type UI. This tool provides an intuitive interface for registering and managing these elements, complementing the functionality of CyberSEO Pro and RSS Retriever.
4. Stay Updated: Keep an eye on updates and advancements in WordPress-related plugins and tools. Regularly check for new features and improvements that can enhance the management and customization of taxonomies on your website. Take advantage of new plugins or tools that simplify the process of structuring your content.
Conclusion
Custom taxonomies in WordPress offer advanced categorization and organization options for websites, allowing for a more precise and intuitive user experience. Plugins like CyberSEO Pro, RSS Retriever, and Custom Post Type UI provide valuable tools for managing and populating custom taxonomies efficiently. Implementing custom taxonomies and utilizing these plugins can improve content organization, streamline content syndication processes, and enhance the overall user experience on your WordPress site.
Being a conservator is spooky at times! I’ve encountered several creepy objects while hunting through the photographic collection of the National Science and Media Museum.
One of my favourites is an album of spirit photographs that made its way to my workbench for some care, as it has found itself in a sticky situation.
The photographs are eerie in their own right. The photographer used tricks to capture ‘spirits’ by taking double and triple exposures. But as a conservator, what truly sent shivers through my spine was… Sellotape. Us conservators fear sticky tape more than anything!
Adhesive tapes are often found in museum collections—they have been available since 1920 and for the last 100 years have caused a fair bit of damage. In the conservation world they are known as pressure sensitive tape, and are composed of two main elements: a flexible carrier and the sticky adhesive. As they age, they oxidise, become acidic and discolour.
Several scenarios are possible when we go to remove tape from an object:
1. The carrier cracks and crumbles, while the glue seeps into the structure of the paper support behind it. This adhesive layer can lose its sticky power, leaving a dark stain in the paper structure.
Brittle adhesive tape after being removed.
2. The carrier is still very much attached to the paper support and the glue is still gooey. If the carrier and glue are stronger than the paper support, this can lead to partial loss of written or printed information.
Old sticky tape still attached to an album.
3. Tape and glue can attach to adjacent pages and materials, which can be difficult to set free.
Gently removing tape with a scalpel
4. Loss of sanity of your lovely conservator due to countless hours trying to remove it!
Countless hours of work later
The scenario for this album was mostly number 1, but for obvious reasons number 4 also made an appearance.
As seen in the image below, the sticky tape had been applied to the upper and lower edges of some pages. The tape carrier was failing and mostly becoming detached, even though in some areas the carrier and glue was very much still attached.
Before treatment: sticky tape along the upper edge of the page.
I painstakingly removed the tape and sticky residues. Unfortunately, darker staining is still visible from the fusion of adhesive to the paper fibres of the pages.
During treatment: removal of the carrierDuring treatment: removing the sticky adhesive
Luckily, this discolouration doesn’t spoil our enjoyment of the creepy content and the photographs themselves were safe from the sticky reach of the tape.
Gladys West is a mathematician most famous for her work on the development of the Global Positioning System, best known as GPS. Using advanced mathematics along with computational algorithms, Gladys devised an intricate model of the shape of the Earth, which underpins the way GPS works. GPS was the world’s first satellite navigation system, and revolutionised the way we locate ourselves in and travel through the world. Today, it’s used by an estimated 3 billion people worldwide.
As a Black woman born under racial segregation in rural America, Gladys overcame tremendous obstacles in her life, and her work has transformed our everyday lives.
Gladys was born Gladys Mae Brown in Sutherland, Virginia, on 27 October 1930. She came from an African American farming family: in her community, the only two career paths for young girls were farming, or working at a tobacco processing factory. Although her parents hadn’t had the opportunity to continue schooling beyond elementary level (about the age of 10), education was very important to them, particularly her mother. Gladys had to help out on the family farm when she wasn’t studying, but from a young age she knew farming wasn’t for her. She was determined to make it out of small-town rural Virginia – and education was the key.
With her parents’ support, Gladys was able to attain high grades across all her subjects at high school. Her high attainment not only gave her the pick of any subject to specialise in, but secured her a full scholarship, without which she wouldn’t have been able to afford to go to college. She attended Virginia State College, a historically Black public university, where she majored in mathematics, a subject mostly studied by men at the time. While her scholarship covered tuition fees, she needed extra funds to live on while she studied, so she took on part-time work as a babysitter. Gladys graduated in 1952, and was keen to keep expanding her knowledge: she spent a couple of years working as a maths teacher to save up enough money to return to Virginia State for a master’s degree in mathematics, which she obtained in 1955.
The following year, she began what would become a lifelong career with the US armed forces with a job at the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia. She was only the second Black woman to be hired there, and one of four Black employees at the time. She had initially turned the job down, believing that she might be rejected at the interview due to her race, but the Proving Ground administration reached out again, offering her the job without needing to interview solely based on her outstanding qualifications. This kind of job and the financial security it offered was a rare opportunity for an African American woman, especially in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, a nation-wide campaign against racial segregation, and fighting equal rights for African Americans.
Gladys worked there as a mathematician, undertaking the complex calculations needed for the research conducted at the facility. Later, she worked on large-scale computers to analyse satellite data, and she continued to progress in this area, working on a number of projects over the years. It was working at Dahlgren that she met her husband, Ira West. They married in 1957, and went on to have three children.
In the mid-1970s, work had begun in earnest on the development of the Global Positioning System, or GPS. As many innovations, the development of GPS was born from military needs: the project was founded by the US Department of Defence as a navigation system for soldiers and military vehicles. To this day, while now available for civilian use, it’s administered by the US Air Force.
GPS uses a network of satellites and ground stations to allow receivers to calculate their location from anywhere on Earth. The relationship between the Earth’s surface and satellites is crucial: every satellite must calculate its own location in relation to the ground stations, and pass that on to the receivers, which then calculate their own location with respect to the satellites. For these calculations to be possible, the system needs an accurate model of the shape of the Earth, with all its contours and elevations.
Gladys West looks over data from the Global Positioning System. Source: US Navy via Wikimedia Commons
Gladys West programmed a computer to produce such a model. It used data from surveying satellites with equations to represent the forces acting on the Earth that distort its shape, such as gravitational and tidal forces. This model, known as the geoid, underpinned the function of GPS, allowing for the precise calculations of any location on Earth.
A modern rendering of Earth’s true shape; the geoid. Source: ESA
Gladys went on to publish further research on improving accuracy in satellite surveying, and continued her computing programming and research at Dahlgren until she retired in 1998, having worked there for 42 years.
However, her career didn’t end with retirement. Gladys obtained a PhD in Public Administration in 2000, at the age of 70. In 2018, she was formally recognised for her contributions to GPS by the Virginia General Assembly, the state’s legislative body. That same year, she was inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame. She and her husband Ira still live in Virginia, and are strong advocates for education- mentoring elementary school students to improve their reading skills, and founding a scholarship programme in collaboration with Dahlgren to support high school students going into Science, Technology, Engineering or Maths (STEM) subjects.
Ira and Gladys West, 2020. Source: Wikimedia Commons
The anniversary will be marked by three special episodes featuring the return of old fan favorites, including Catherine Tate and David Tennant reprising their roles as Donna Noble and the Doctor respectively, as well as the return of Russell T. Davies as showrunner.
The specials will also feature Neil Patrick Harris as the Celestial Toymaker, an enemy of the Doctor who first appeared in 1966 facing William Hartnell’s First Doctor.
A Dalek battles Frankenstein’s Monster in a classic episode of Doctor Who.
Which other familiar faces might we see return to greet the Doctor in this new age for the series?
Iconic enemies like the Daleks and Cybermen are likely to return as they remain ever popular. They have appeared in almost every season of the ‘New Who’ era, which began in 2005.
If you’ve ever visited the National Science and Media Museum, you will be familiar with our resident Dalek. And those who visited the Science Fiction exhibition at our sister site, the Science Museum in London, earlier this year will have also encountered the Cyberman on display.
A Dalek on display at the National Science and Media Museum, in the former Experience TV Gallery.Cyberman costume which was displayed at the Science Museums temporary exhibition Science Fiction in 2023.
But what about other lesser-known enemies of the Doctor, like the Toymaker? Might we see creatures such as the Zarbi, the Lavae Cannon or even the Menoptra make a comeback too?
A what, or whom, you may be thinking.
These creatures first appeared in the series as foes (Zarbi and Lavae Cannon) and allies (Menoptra) of the First Doctor and his companions in the second series of the show, in the serial ‘The Web Planet’.
Photograph form the Daily Herald depicting two Zarbis and a mini-monster, the Lavae Cannon, from the set of Doctor Who in 1965.
The images shown here come from the Daily Herald, a popular newspaper which ran from 1912 to 1969. These images were published back when Doctor Who was a brand-new show on the BBC, and now we’re celebrating its 60th anniversary!
Photograph from the Daily Herald depicting a butterfly man, the ‘Menoptra’, as he is cornered by a Zarbi and the Lavae Cannon from the set of Doctor Who in 1965.
The Zarbi and Menoptra were spectacular enough to make the news and act as teasers for the second series of Doctor Who. So maybe one day they’ll make their return to our screens.
Alongside old favorites we also have lots of other new things ahead of us. Next year will mark the start of the show’s 40th series, starring Ncuti Gatwa as the 15th Doctor.
In addition to the previously mentioned creatures kept safely in our collection, we also have Stookie Bill, a new foe set to hit our screens in one of 60th anniversary specials.
Stookie Bill is a one of the ventriloquist dummy heads used by TV pioneer John Logie Baird. Stookie was used in place of human test subjects, as the lights Baird used in his experimental apparatus were too hot. The heat from these experiments has caused Stookie to look rather terrifying today. Though he no longer has a career in ventriloquism, his television career carries on.
I for one can’t wait to see what mischief Stookie Bill gets up to in the new episodes of Doctor Who!
