Last weekend we toured an old house in Newburyprt, MA. It had an unusual feature-the top sides of the upper floor windows were of blue glass. I asked the gide about this, and it seems that in the 1870’s, there was a minor craze for blue glass windws in New England.
Why was this? Did somebody think there were health benefits to blue light?
Anyway, it is one of the more unusual things-how long did this craze go on for?
There’s a good chapter about this in Paul Collins’ interesting book Banvard’s Folly. I don’t remember all the specifics, but essentially it was one of the many pseudo-scientific health crazes that came about in the later half 19th century was that there were all sorts of benefits to blue-tinted light. As with most of these crazes, there was an enthusiastic proponent, in this case General A. J. Pleasonton, and the degree to which it was willful self delusion or an actual malicious scam is debatable.
Here’s his manifesto of sorts (printed with blue ink, of course): On the Influence of the Blue Color of the Sky in Developing Animal and ... - Augustus James Pleasonton - Google Books
And an excerpt from Scientific American debunking it in 1877: http://chestofbooks.com/crafts/scientific-american/XXXVI-8/The-Blue-Glass-Deception.html
Been a long time since I heard mention of “caloric.”