Look and see: Optical technology and disciplinary mechanisms in Topps Trading Cards, 1948-1952

In this article I examine trading cards produced by Topps Chewing Gum, Inc. in the United States in the decade following World War II. I focus on how these cards functioned as mechanisms of discipline, through the practices associated with collecting, as well as through their content and use. Cards reflected contemporary trends in education and behavioural science. In addition, they utilised what I term optical technology to entice children to buy. This came in the form of rudimentary optical tricks that emulated scientific and technological developments associated with wartime. I argue that in doing so, these cards brought children into the nascent military-technological complex, and provided a way to view the world in hierarchical terms through optical science.


Introduction
In this article, I examine collectible trading cards produced for children between 1948 and 1952, which utilised optical technologies that allowed the cards to stand out in a crowded market. I explore how the optical and visual elements of the cards coalesced with collecting practices to inculcate a particular view of the place of the United States within global history. I differentiate between optical and visual using "optical" to denote devices that manipulate light to alter vision, such as light filtration, and "visual" to refer to the faculty of seeing, which may be altered by optical technologies. 1 I use the term "optical technology" to describe light manipulation devices that were included with some cards. I examine 1948's Magic Photos, 1949's X-Ray Round Up, and 1952 Look 'n See cards, all produced by Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., the leading manufacturer of trading cards by the mid-1950s. Trading card companies produced numerous nonsports cards during the postwar period, with many being explicitly educational, or portraying an idealised vision of the United States to their most common collectors: young boys. Analysis of the cards provides insight into how Topps envisaged its audience in the postwar period, and into what the company, its executives, and its artists deemed appropriate for children to know and understand about the world.
I first discuss how trading cards can be read as disciplinary mechanisms, proposing that they functioned to instil certain modes of thinking about the world; instructing about and perpetuating social hierarchies. I touch on Steven M. Gelber's analysis of stamp collecting as a free market metaphor, and draw on Bruno Latour's analysis of visualisation and cognition, suggesting that trading cards fit his concept of the "immutable mobile".
Having established trading cards as disciplinary mechanisms, I address the optical technologies invoked by these card sets: instant photographic development, and x-ray.
Although the cards employ only rudimentary "technologies," they use language that rhetorically links the practices of playing with cards to wider technological developments with which children were generally familiar. Their content lauds science and engineering as part of a militarised American identity, highlighting the pursuits of scientists and engineers alongside those of national heroes and pioneers. By engaging with these cards, young children of the postwar period were invited to learn about these heroic figures through a sensorial engagement with the kinds of technology they had pioneered.
Moreover, children were learning about anthropological and cultural "others" by revealing information about them through visual play. Trading cards as disciplinary mechanisms Trading cards were first sold together with cigarettes in the mid-nineteenth century with the aim that consumers would collect them, resulting in brand loyalty. However, politicians, and public health and morality groups raised concerns over their popularity with children (Jamieson 2010:17-24). This, and the relatively high production costs of cards to cigarettes, led to a decline in trading card production. The invention of bubblegum in 1928 provided a product that could be sold directly to children, allowing a new market for trading cards, which had already proven popular among children. By the postwar period, although they were still sold with bubblegum, the cards themselves had become the main draw for purchasers.  Gelber (1992:756) notes that stamp collecting was initially linked to women and children, but around 1860 became more associated with men. He argues that the shift was related to the commoditisation and scientification of the hobby, whereby the aesthetic qualities of stamps and the sentimental value placed on their imagery were superseded by their financial and educational value. According to Gelber (1992:756), stamp collectors claimed to 'scientifically collect, classify, and arrange stamps', and that '[u]nderlying the physical aspects of the stamp itself was the taxonomic structure of the entire hobby. Like biological specimens, stamps could be analyzed and placed into specific categories. Once the stamp was authenticated and analyzed, it could then take its place as part of a defined set' (Gelber 1992:757). 5 Trading card producers capitalised on the idea of classification and order by numbering cards in such a way as to promote collection. As early as the 1930s, collectors such as Burdick produced card collecting pamphlets that systematised sets. Although these booklets were more likely to be read by adult collectors than children, the ease with which card sets could be systematised highlights that these cards were conducive to systematic, completist, and hierarchical practices of collecting, even among children. with experiences that help them make sense of their place in society' (Gelber 1992:745).
In addition to the taxonomic and economic facets of trading cards, they are, at the most basic level, inscriptions. The cards contain images and information about a wide variety of topics, presenting overviews of contemporary western knowledge. They constitute part of a visual culture that ' [re]defines both what it is to see and what there is to see' (Latour 1986:10). Moreover, they fall into the category that Latour, in Visualization and cognition, calls 'immutable mobiles'. Latour (1986:31) proposes, following print culture historian Elizabeth Eisenstein, that the impact of the development of printing on science and technology has been underestimated. He argues that printing's real importance is that it can produce texts that are both immutable and mobile. In order to persuade others to think differently about aspects of the world, it is necessary to produce inscriptions of those aspects that are identical wherever they are viewed, in other words immutable, and yet also able to be dispersed or combined, making them mobile. Latour (1986:31) notes that paperwork -the act of committing inscriptions of objects to paper -is critical 'to accumulate enough allies in one place to modify the belief and behavior of all the others'. He notes that printed things are easily circulated (while remaining immutable), are easily reproducible, can be 'shuffled and recombined,' and allow the superimposition of 'totally different origins and scales' (Latour 1986:21). This means that subjects that might not otherwise go together can do so when in printed form. Latour (1986:11) writes that immutable mobiles allow someone in a single location to collect 'places far away in space and time and present them synoptically … this synoptic presentation … can be spread with no modification to other places and made available at other times'.
In contrast with oral circulation, statements imbued with the immutability of print become expensive and unwieldy to challenge. To contradict the printed word, one must print one's own. The fact that trading cards in this period focused so heavily on the so-called "great white male" of western civilisation must have been counter to many American children's experiences, particularly girls and children of colour. However, since the cards were inscribed and circulated by corporations, challenges to the hegemonic outlook were precluded. Latour (1986:16) notes the panopticism that is present in immutable mobiles, citing anthropologist Johannes Fabian in remarking that 'the main difference between us and the savages … is not in the culture, in the mind, or in the brain, but in the way we visualize them. An asymmetry is created because we create a space and a time in which we place the other cultures, but they do not do the same' (Latour 1986:16, page 05 of 26 Number 34, 2020 ISSN 2617-3255 emphasis in original). "Our" culture mobilises 'all savages in a few lands through collection', presenting them in a synoptic fashion to viewers. In doing so, readers can know the subjects, but in such a way -two-dimensionally, rather than three -that makes them 'less confusing' (Latour 1986:16).
Trading cards operate by presenting synoptic overviews of anthropological, historical, and scientific subjects in a way that renders them safe and easy to digest, and that produces illusory knowledge -superficial and beset by colonial overtones. In this sense, the cards resemble displays at World's Fairs and exhibitions. As Lieven De Cauter (1993:5) notes, panoramas at events like World's Fairs allowed all of history to be compacted into a single overview. Panoramas reflect the Enlightenment "fabrication" of 'a linear time, a history as progress … They make clear that to read history as progress you need a "viewpoint" and a "guideline," a perspective where humanity is projected into a remote distance … This organization of the perception of space and time could be called: "the panoramic gaze"' (De Cauter 1993:4-5).
Trading cards that aimed to educate children about world history, and the American citizen's place within it took this approach. They provide a panoramic overview of western civilisation, featuring paragons of western science and rational thought, while also giving an overview of what Fabian would have termed the "savage," as counterpoints. Many card sets include such topics as tribespeople of the world or American Indians, often using highly detailed, if stylised, images of anthropological subjects. The numbering of the cards invites readers to place the content of the cards within a taxonomic, hierarchical structure, while the practice of collecting itself encourages readers to systematise their knowledge and understanding. Through a combination of visual flair and taxonomic organisation, these cards invited children to engage with history in ways that were educational, exciting, and disciplinary. They led children to an archive of western history through which they could view the world, and impose order upon it, thereby imposing order upon themselves. Moreover, the cards present their subjects in such a way that requires participating in optical techniques that reveal the "truth" about these subjects, engaging children with contemporary scientific developments, and heightening the anthropological aspect of such cards.

The Technological States of America
After the trauma of World War II, the United States was renegotiating its position. Although it had "won," asserting itself as a superpower, it had done so using fearsome technology that had the potential to annihilate nations in one stroke. During its tenure as the sole nuclear power, and even more so after losing this status, there was a drive in the United Groves, wrote in the foreword that he hoped the pamphlet would 'touch off the spark that will send many on a quest for more knowledge and will help us to guide our leaders in creating an endless peace for all the world' (Groves, Dunning & Hill 1949:2).
Trading card companies were not strictly in the business of education, but their cards often had educational content. Though children may not have collected full sets or only had a partial grasp of any overarching narrative, the aforementioned inducements to collect meant that they would be aware of the full set's existence, and that they could ascertain the full synopsis of a topic by purchasing or swapping cards. In addition, introduce basic health physics'. Therefore, we can see the integration of such technologies, even in a mimicking form, into playthings as a method of basic science education, which allowed children to be enfolded within the wider discourses of these technologies. collector reminiscences suggest that spitting on the cards was effective. 12 Moistening and rubbing the cards activated a proprietary chemical development process (See Figure   1). However, the cards did not always develop evenly (see Figure 2). While the means to carry out penetrative imaging had been available since the discovery of radiation by Roentgen in 1895, x-ray technology was enjoying a boom in the immediate postwar period, with the 1940s seeing the introduction of 'mass civilian screening for tuberculosis with portable x-ray machines' (Gitlin 2011); the introduction of mobile radiology equipment, and the invention of superior imaging techniques to fulfil military needs (Krohmer 1989(Krohmer :1136; the new field of "health physics" that grew from an increased awareness around exposure to radiation that stemmed directly from the Manhattan Project (Brodsky & Kathren 1989:1271; and the use of radiography in shoe fittings for children (Gitlin 2011). Therefore, the rhetoric of x-ray technology would have been familiar to children of that era, who would also have been exposed to phenomena such as Superman's x-ray vision, which first appeared during the 1940s. In addition, novelty products like X-Ray Specs abounded in popular culture. 15 These products used basic optical technology, dressed up as x-ray, to create a visual illusion that enticed children to see the product as technologically novel, and to purchase it in droves.

X-Ray Round Up was a 200-card set released in 1949 that carried full-colour illustrations
of people representing five topic subsets: "Indians," "Movie Stars," "Pirates," "Savage Tribesmen," and "Wild West," including such figures as Sitting Bull, Mae West, Captain Kidd, a Lumbwa Warrior, and Billy the Kid (see Figure 3). On the backs of these cards were red line drawings related to the topics, with a faintly visible green drawing, also related to the topic, 16 underlaid (see Figure 4).
When a piece of red cellophane was held over the cards, the green image became more visible. Although this technique has nothing to do with actual x-ray, the naming of these cards invokes the x-ray technology that was a popular facet of science culture at that time. It is unclear how popular these cards were, 17 but the highly collectible 135-card set Look 'n See, released in 1952, used the same optical technology. Although this set did not use the term "x-ray", the fact that the same red-cellophane technique had been referred to as "x-ray" by the same manufacturer only three years earlier, suggests that both sets of cards evoke the popularisation of x-ray technology in wider culture.
Look 'n See appeared as Topps was attempting to wrest dominance of the trading card market from rival producers, and closely mirrored Topps's renowned 1952 baseball set, which featured a new design and was 'the most popular sports card set ever produced' (Hanley 2012:65). 18 The cards measured 2-1/7" x 2-7/8", 19 and featured full-colour portraits of individual people, with their names in a white box surrounded by yellow (see Figure   5). Whereas the baseball cards carried player autographs in this box, Look 'n See provided descriptions of the person's defining achievement, while baseball team logos were replaced by icons depicting the field with which each individual was associated.

FIGURE N o 4a
Topps X-Ray Round Up, card 23, King of the Crow Tribe, back with "magic" cellophane, revealing an image of a water hole, (Author's private collection).   (21)  of the more heroically described men of colour are coded in the artwork as white. For instance, the Mongol leader Genghis Khan appears identical in skin tone to many of the western subjects, with a pale eye colour. Both he and Chiang Kai-Shek sport classical Roman noses. The remainder of the subjects of colour are "Indian Chiefs," who are largely depicted ignominiously, such as Geronimo who is described as 'the worst Indian who ever lived! Cunning and blood-thirsty, he was very cruel'. 24

X-Ray and revelation
While the fronts of the Look 'n See cards present a synoptic overview of history, the backs require that children engage with optical technology to reveal further information.
The so-called "x-ray" effect added an element of anthropological surveillance; not only were children seeing images and information about icons of global history or "savage tribespeople," they were also encouraged to probe them. Using cellophane, they could reveal hidden information through deeper observation, and discover the "secrets" of their subjects. In the early Cold War state, the rhetoric of surveillance was abundant, with myriad toys that encouraged spying, or manipulating the visual to obtain information. 25 This emphasis on deeper observation was also prevalent in contemporary social sciences.
In Hypothetical machines, Rebecca Lemov (2010:409) writes that, '[i]n addition to emphasis placed on systematizing, formalizing, and recombining methods, the late 1940s and of the inner selves of anthropological subjects (Lemov 2010:409). Lemov (2011:254) further notes that 'X-ray like tools, in the course of their deployment in fieldwork, would be able to regularize the observation of all that otherwise eluded ordinary visibility'. Likewise, trading cards regularised the gaze of children toward both American icons and "exotic" populations, imposing order onto them, augmented by replicas of scientific observation.

Conclusion
In 1953, Topps's advertising and sales director, Mitch Diamond, wrote to collector Bella C. Landauer that, 'if you place the celophane [sic] on top of the red portion of the card, you will find the answer appearing like "magic"' (Diamond 1953 write off the "magic" of the cellophane as a sales gimmick, the use of revelatory technology in these cards was more akin to what David Kaiser and Patrick McCray (2017) call 'the science and technology that had underpinned the expansion, power, and prosperity of the United States since'. In the postwar period, as atomic and space science abounded, children were increasingly exposed to science-adjacent entities -both in school, with formal education covering such topics as atomic energy and international relations (Hartman 2008:137), as well as in their day-to-day playthings.
Children also experienced scientification in everyday life, reflecting the culmination of a period in which the role of "scientific experts" held increasing sway over child rearing.
As Judith Sealander (2002:2-3) notes in The failed century of the child, developments over the first half of the twentieth century included ideas like sorting children into educa-tional grades, with age-appropriate targets. Play was also subject to such regulation, with self-directed play superseded by rules-based team sports, 26 and commercial toys divided into age-and gender-appropriate strata. Many playthings for children also highlighted militaristic and scientific supremacy as an American ideal. 27 These had the potential to regulate children, both in the act of play itself, and in terms of their emergent subjectivity.
Many of the Topps sets from the postwar period reflect a tendency to valorise general Similar to these university courses, trading cards provide a necessarily superficial overview of the United States as the apex of centuries of western civilisation, juxtaposing it with so-called "savages" -anthropological "others," who in many cases were displaced, uprooted, or usurped by that very civilisation. Indeed, as Latour (1986:16) of seeing. The Foucauldian panopticon, as Latour (1986:15) writes, 'is another way of obtaining the "optical consistency" necessary for power on a large scale'. Trading cards required children to examine subjects in ways that emulated the optical consistency produced by contemporary military-scientific innovation.
The already hierarchic vision of the world put forth by the content of these cards was augmented by the inclusion of optical technology that tied the cards to both other popular cultural artefacts and the scientific worldview of the period, and induced a mode of interaction that required children to perform similar work to the social scientists of the Projective Test Movement. As Lemov (2011:251)  4. Although girls collected, anecdotal evidence suggests that boys were more avid. The rhetorical content of cards seems to presume a young, white, male audience. For more see Bloom (1997) and Kevill-Davies (2018).
5. This certainly seems to apply to collectors today, whose use of the Burdick system, appraisal sites, and online forums is geared toward completing sets of cards based on various agreed-upon criteria.
page 21 of 26 Number 34, 2020 ISSN 2617-3255 6. Such as Superglue, developed by Eastman Kodak during WWII and opened to consumer markets in 1958, and synthetic rubber, developed during the war and later used for a range of purposes such as tires and even replaced natural (chicle) chewing gum.
14. The British National Collection of Aerial Photography holds intelligence images of sites that were critical to undermining the V-rocket program as part of Operation Crossbow: https://ncap.org.uk/feature/ operation-crossbow 15. X-Ray Specs have existed since the 1900s, and are discussed at https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/ atomictoys/xrayspecs.htm. Myriad other toys involving optical technology existed contemporaneously, such as a ring that allowed one to visualize atomic reactions, sold as a means to reveal secrets, chemistry and science kits, and so on.
16. For instance, the red image on the card for California Joe, a Western Scout, showed a western style saloon building, and revealed a green image of wagons with the caption 'Sighting the Stockade'. The card for Captain Francis Spriggs depicts a pirate with a treasure chest in red, and in green shows a pirate holding pieces of gold.
17. They were reissued in 1956, which suggests they were popular, but there is no concrete data.
18. For more of the history of Topps' struggles to achieve dominance, see Jamieson (2010), Hanley (2012) and Hornish (2013 one is labelled as "traitor," Benedict Arnold. 21. The omission of women, other than heads of state or martyrs, was a feature of overview courses that was remarked upon by Weber (1999) and McNeill (1997 (46), and Joan of Arc (133).
23. This may be merely a typographical error, as it is written correctly on the reverse of the card. However, it suggests a lack of care in spelling non-western names correctly.
24. The full list of subjects of colour is as follows: Geronimo (56), Sitting Bull (58) 25. For instance, the Kix Atomic Bomb Ring was advertised with a comic strip in which a young boy spied on would-be infiltrators to a laboratory and state secrets, while Superman's x-ray vision was well established.
26. For more on the scientification of play, see Sutton-Smith (2009) and Chudacoff (2007). For more on the regimentation of sport see Elias (2001) and Montez De Oca (2013).
27. Toy guns, atom bomb themed toys, science kits, and so on were abundant in this period.
29. Debates raged for decades at major universities over the value of providing an overview education, as opposed to more narrowly focused specialist subjects. Particularly after World War I, proponents of the general education movement advocated for the teaching of an overview of global history from an American perspective. See Pinar et al. (1995)