The physics of James Joyce's Ulysses - Ars Technica

Ulysses chronicles the life of an ordinary Dublin man named Leopold Bloom over the course of a single day: June 16, 1904 (now celebrated around the world as Bloomsday).

For instance, when Bloom invites Dedalus to his home, he tries to impress the young man by declaring that it is possible to see the Milky Way during the day if the observer were "placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 ft [sic] deep sunk from the surface towards the center of the Earth."

Manos notes that Sir Robert Ball, at the time director of the Dunsink Observatory just north of Dublin, had published two popular books.

Dedalus spots one of them, The Story of the Heavens, in Blooms's library, The other was called Star-Land, which talks about being able to see stars in daylight from the bottom of a mineshaft or tall chimney.

While Manos was unable to trace a specific source for this term, there was a similar device that had been invented some 20 years earlier: Alexander Graham Bell's photophone, co-invented with his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter.

There are several other instances of physics (both correct and incorrect/outdated) mentioned in Ulysses, per Manos, including Bloom misunderstanding the science of x-rays; his confusion over parallax; trying to figure out the source of buoyancy in the Dead Sea; ruminating on Archimedes' "burning glass"; seeing rainbow colors in a water spray; and pondering why he hears the ocean when he places a seashell to his ear.