Between 1912 and 1918, Marcel Duchamp made hundreds of notes in preparation for the execution of his major work, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23), also known as the Large Glass. Considering these notes to be as important as the Glass itself, Duchamp published three sets during his lifetime - 178 notes in all. But since his death in 1968, more than 100 further notes about the work have been discovered and published.

In this book, Linda Henderson provides the first systematic study of the Large Glass in relation to the entire corpus of Duchamp's notes for the project. Since Duchamp declared his interest in creating a "Playful Physics," she focuses on the scientific and technological themes that pervade the notes and the imagery of the Large Glass.

In order to recover that content, Henderson provides an unprecedented history of science as popularly known at the turn of the century, centered on the late Victorian physics that dominated scientific practice and the public imagination.