The Violet Ray Series
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About the Series | What Is a Violet Ray? | Submission Process | Help Fund the Series | Promotional Branding | Books in the Series
About the Series
The Violet Ray Series is an archival preservation collection of chapbooks and limited-edition publications from the first 20 years of pre-digital operation at Alternating Current Press. The mission of the series is to preserve, reprint, and digitize the voices of the zine generation at the turn of the new millennium. [Back to Top]
What Is a Violet Ray?
A violet ray is an electrical apparatus first created by Nikola Tesla and introduced as a prototype at the World’s Columbian Exposition (World’s Fair) in Chicago in 1893. The device consists of an ungrounded, electrical control box that controls an interrupter and houses a magneto coil, with an attached Bakelite or other handle housing that contains a high-voltage coil and an insertion port for attachments, which are usually made of evacuated glass tubes of varying shapes.
Although not necessarily its original intention, most violet rays were used as quack medical devices in the very-late 19th and early 20th centuries to administer electrotherapy, applying a high-voltage, high-frequency, low current to the human body for therapeutic purposes of every nature. Violet ray treatments were said to cure everything from lower-back pain to carbuncles and brain fog to nasal issues. Manufacturing of the violet ray for medical purposes ended with World War II, when those few companies still making the device changed over to manufacturing radio coils and other electrical components for the war instead. A 1951 lawsuit against one of the last remaining companies resulted in the device being seized by the FDA and being outlawed from production in the United States. [Back to Top]
Submission Process
This is not a series that accepts submissions. It comprises only archival reprints from the first 20 years of Alternating Current Press (1993-2013). [Back to Top]
Help Fund the Series
This series is focused on keeping books in print from a crucial time in the evolution of indie presses that bridges the gap between the pre-Internet zine days and the birth of the digital era. This is a preservation series that doesn’t necessarily have a high volume of sales but that serves an important niche for representing an era that didn’t have a large digital presence. We could use your help to keep these books in print and keep this series running on all cylinders. If you’d like to help with this preservation project, please consider donating to our annual fundraising goals. [Back to Top]
Promotional Branding
ACP has a brand look that we maintain in the public and social spheres. Our colors are a bright yellow hex #FFFF00, a bright blue hex #308EE6, and a powder blue hex #6699cc. Our standard easy-to-read non-serif font for social graphics is Avenir Book. You can download the hi-res Violet Ray Series logo from our website. [Back to Top]
Books in the Series
- ; Or, How We Stopped Warming Up for 20 Years and Learned to Exit the Green Room: Poetry Archives 1993-2013: 147 Poems by 34 Authors
- The Art of Arranging: A Collection of 5 Chapbooks + Outtakes by Paul Weinman, Joseph Verrilli, & Harry Calhoun
- Of Small Things: A Collection of 4 Chapbooks + Outtakes by Dave Church, Stephanie Hiteshew, B. Z. Niditch, & More
- Poiesis Review #1-5: A Literary Journal Poetry Archive (Issues #1-5 Collected) by 73 authors [Back to Top]
