A Partial and Conjectural History of Dr. Mueller’s Panoptical Cartoon EngineMy first contact with that fabled and archaic humour-generating contraption known as Dr. Mueller’s Panoptical Cartoon Engine occurred some years ago at a rural auction in Chepachet, Rhode Island. (The literary minded among my readers will surely recall that Chepachet particularly impressed the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft as redolent of the most “antient” New England vibes. But I make no explicit links between Lovecraft’s subjective characterization of the queer village and my discovery of Dr. Mueller’s device there.)
In the dim and dusty barn where the auction was taking place that autumn day, I began poking around among an odd lot of machinery: strange agricultural and household implements of another century. I
