Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 59: Line 55 (1036)

 Some were inventors with light-engines that could run a bicycle all day but at nightfall stopped abruptly, causing the bike to fall over with you on it, if you weren't careful.

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"Some"
Pynchon can get pretty confusing with referrants at times due to his narrative's loose connection to any one time, place, or perspective. This "some" is simpler than most because it's either referring to the scientific enthusiasts who merely came to the city for the experiment or the ones who were locked up in the insane asylum. This should be an important distinction and maybe subject to your distrust of authority figures and how petty they can be when challenged on any of their beliefs. Did they throw a guy in a mental institution because he invented a self-propelled bike that shut off at night? If the bike didn't also have pedals to continue being used in a regular manner as soon as the engine stopped, I'd have thrown him in an asylum as well.

"light-engines"
I desperately want to read this as some grand science fiction space engine but I'm sure it just means "solar-powered."

"at nightfall stopped abruptly, causing the bike to fall over with you on it, if you weren't careful"
This just sounds like a conservative trying to scaremonger the pubic away from solar-powered engines. "Oh, it works perfectly fine during the day, does it? But what about . . . NIGHT TIME! Have you thought of that? A child not realizing night was super slowly coming on the way night always comes on could be killed when the bike abruptly shuts off! Would you have that on your conscious? No? Then stick with the coal burning steam versions that only occasionally blow up in their inventor's faces, killing them!"

Looking at the sentence less literally, we can read in it one of Pynchon's themes of the book. The book began with the Thelonious Monk quote, "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light," suggesting, perhaps, that without purposeful intervention, things would be dark, bleak, despairing. Our bikes will fall over if we aren't careful. The light sustains us, shows us the way, allows us to proceed in a forward manner towards the future. This can also be more metaphor than literal in the sense of light, or illumination, being seen as knowledge. Without the constant influx of scientific knowledge, we will eventually crash (if we aren't careful!).

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 59: Line 54 (1035)

 They were talking about the Northern Ohio Insane Asylum, a few miles southeast of town, in which currently were lodged some of the more troublesome of the scientific cranks Cleveland these days had been filling up rapidly with, enthusiasts from everywhere in the nation and abroad for that matter, eager to bathe in the radiance of the celebrated Æther-drift experiment in progress out at Case.

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"Northern Ohio Insane Asylum"
Pynchon being generous here and explaining one of his references for those weirdos who don't keep the Internet at hand while reading a Pynchon book.

"currently were lodged some of the more troublesome of the scientific cranks"
Holy heck how troublesome can these science fanatics be?! Feels more like maybe a few nerds stood out from the crowd too much and these bully cops decided to give them a brief incarceration instead of a wedgie. I suppose this experiment has become some kind of a spring break for science nerds. Sort of like how at the beginning of the book, the World's Columbian Exposition was spring break for ballooning enthusiasts. That's where the kids met Merle and his penchant for photographing naked ladies!

"eager to bathe in the radiance of the celebrated Æther-drift experiment"
This is a pun. Bathe in the radiance of a light experiment.

"Æther-drift experiment"
The Michelson-Morley Experiment was supposed to prove the existence of Æther through how light moved through it while traveling in different directions. It was theorized that the Æther would drift based on its interaction with the movement of the Earth. This should have caused light to move at differing speeds when moving in perpendicular directions. It did not. But this failed experiment was possibly the beginning of moving the world into special relativity. So that's probably why it's so important to the beginning of this novel. Special relativity will probably be important towards the end of the novel which sucks because I'll finally have to try to understand what all that's about. I'm sure it's more than just "light moves at a constant velocity no matter what which means time has to be the changing variable! Wacky!"

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 59: Lines 52-53 (1033-1034)

 "Well, let's do a check. Crossed eyes, protruding tongue, Napoleon hat?"

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"Crossed eyes, protruding tongue, Napoleon hat?"
This is how neurotypical people actually perceive mentally ill people. Mentally ill people would be surprised to find out this is true but it is. This isn't a cop being a totally ableist prick in 1887! It's just a cop describing how a mentally ill person would look to somebody who wasn't mentally ill. It's just facts, ma'am.

"Napoleon hat"
What was the last generation who understood the shorthand of somebody thinking they're Napoleon meaning they were crazy? Most Gen-Xers probably learned this (like they learned 80% of everything) from Looney Tunes. Was there a cartoon that kept this trope going for Millennials? Did Sponge Bob ever see Squidward with a Napoleon hat? What about the Rugrats? Doug? Rocko? Pete and/or Pete? Being that it's a mental illness called Grandiose Delusion, people today would not think they're Napoleon. They'd be Taylor Swift or Kanye West or Harry Potter. But back in the 1800s, Napoleon was one of the major go-to figures to think you were, if you thought you were historically important.

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 "Another candidate for Newburgh here, looks like."

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"Newburgh"
Probably an asylum or prison. Looking it up on ClevelandHistorical.org, Newburgh was an asylum, known as the Cleveland State Hospital, Northern Ohio Lunatic Asylum, The Newburgh Asylum, or The Cleveland Asylum for the Insane.

Was that assumption based on my bias of police or the fact that Pynchon just said the police were getting truculent? Would a person who loves cops and be on the side of cops in any situation have thought, "Oh! I bet Newburgh is a nice place to relax with a coffee or tea and calm down. He probably suggested it because Merle was getting so animated and excited discussing the scientific experiment!" Or would they, too, have been all, "Probably a prison or a morgue! And a well-deserved place to stick this uppity liberal intellectual!"

Here's a quick tip for dumb people so they don't expose how dumb they are when somebody assumes they're smart: don't get mad when you don't understand something! Only dumb people feel dumb and angry when somebody else shows how smart they are! Smart people also don't understand stuff but they show curiosity instead of anger when exposed to it! That's free advice from a great big dumby! Don't tell the smarts how dumb I am! *wink*

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 59: Line 50 (1031)

 Merle went off into a long and confused description of the Michelson-Morley experiment, and his interest in it, which was not shared by the policemen, who began to grow distant, and presently truculent.

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"long and confused description of the Michelson-Morley experiment"
I don't think there's any other way to do a description of the experiment, especially in the 1880s. Now we have Wikipedia but that's also a long and confused description, especially to a dumb-dumb like me! It's the experiment that rang the death knell for Æther! It's quite an important moment for Against the Day, especially this first section which is really focusing quite a bit on light and its properties. It's a good overarching metaphor for how science was destroying the world. Not literally! At least not yet! We'll have to wait until the 1940's for that revelation (which would make you think it's covered in Gravity's Rainbow except the only sign of the atomic bomb in that book is a half-obscured newspaper headline). The scientists were actually remaking reality through cutting edge experiments. The world was one way before the Chicago World Fair and another after. Only because that's a festive, grand, and easily pinpointed moment in American culture.

"the policemen, who began to grow distant, and presently truculent"
Look, I didn't spend fifty years of my life observing how police act and not learn a little something about assholes being assholes. I've also noticed that artistic people often have observed these things as well. So is it a surprise to some people that this cop, after only being told about something he can't understand, begins to get angry and eager to fight? Of course not! It's especially not surprising since Thomas Pynchon wrote this! I often wonder what kinds of artistic entertainment Conservatives can actually like. Most artistic and thoughtful people are diametrically opposed to Conservative values. Is this why the only books they can read are by Ayn Rand?

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 59: Line 49 (1030)

 "Well this is refreshing, usually we get Blinky jokes."

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"Blinky jokes"
Blinky Morgan! The guy whose gang stole some furs and wound up killing two police officers across two different arrest attempts! Ha ha!

Although I'm really curious what kind of jokes people were telling to the cops when being stopped and searched. Common people love common and easy jokes so this cop probably heard the same Blinky joke twenty times a day. "Oh! You got me! Got Blinky in my satchel!" Then five other guys stepped out from hiding and shot the officer to death. That's a joke about what happened to one of the officers when they tried to arrest Blinky! What I'm saying is it's not much of a joke even if you are telling it to cops. Seems hurtful!

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 59: Lines 47-48 (1028-1029)

 "Nothin much. You're sure welcome to look."

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Merle pulling his best polite response to avoid getting his ass beat by a cop, all of whom believe their gut instincts are always correct and that beating and possibly killing a regular citizen is justified if the cop's gut has judged that the person the cop has decided to harass has committed the least crime imaginable. To a cop, no crime exists that can't wind up in an instant death penalty if they fucking feel like administering it. It needs to be legal to pelt cops with eggs when citizens see them abusing their power. It also needs to be legal to prosecute them for criminal acts. Enough of this bullshit where the District Attorney rarely ever puts a cop on trial for some heinous violence they've committed because if they do, the cops will retaliate and stop working with the District Attorney as witnesses on other cases and the District Attorney's win percentage will drop and they'll feel humiliated and they won't be able to perform in the bedroom with their spouse anymore.

That didn't have anything to do with the text. If you want some commentary on the text, here you go: "I don't have any commentary on these lines. But what I do have commentary on is how awful people who defend police brutality are. Who the fuck goes around carrying water for cops by instantly believing the cops version because the person they've killed is far too dead to defend themselves? Who are these assholes who will justify police murder by saying the most trite and unintelligent bullshit such as 'They should have complied!' As if being confronted by a cop, whom we know will murder at the drop of a hat which he'll later say he thought was a gun, isn't already scary and confusing before they decide to escalate a simple situation so that they can feel justified using whatever force they want. Cop defenders are the worst people in the world."