Smithsonian Libraries

Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack!

Those are the sounds a good old-fashioned typewriter makes after a feverish night of typing done by the literary wordsmith writing the Great American Novel or the muckraking journalist exposing the local mayor for corruption charges. In what is virtually a bygone era replaced by the personal computer, we here at the Libraries felt it fitting to revisit an old friend.

It was in 1714 that Queen Anne of Great Britain issued a patent for a "writing machine," conjuring up a dream of "[a]n artificial machine or method for the impressing or transcribing of letters, singly or progressively, one after another as in writing, whereby all writings whatsoever may be embossed on paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print."

It would take more than a century to realize this dream, with many patents issued in Europe and America, although none made it into commercial production. A patent was granted finally in 1866 to Christopher Latham Sholes of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This led to an agreement with the E. Remington and Sons company to commercialize the machine and begin production in 1873. The rest, as they say, is typewriter history! There would be later innovations, of course (with electric typewriters and models promising "noiseless" typewriters), but the core functions remained the same.

If you want to learn more about the typewriter, the Libraries has extensive coverage of this technological marvel. A brief history of the typewriter is a good place to start. An extensive amount of trade literature is also available on various typewriter companies (including Remington) to peruse at the National Museum of American History Library. Just make sure to change your ribbon before typing up a storm!—Brett Lambert

Happy Labor Day from Smithsonian Libraries!

Above: Collage of various promotional materials for the Remington typewriter

Above: Remington Typewriter from 1908.

Have a Holly, Jolly...September!

The Libraries isn't exactly pushing the season, but our Cataloging department must review and process titles such holiday-themed now, in preparation for the upcoming season. This particular item, after it has entered our system, will then be sent to our preservation department, in  preparation for our planned exhibition of pop-up and movable books, Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn.

The first Noël : a Christmas Carousel

by Jan Pieńkowski

Pub. by Candlewick Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004

Additional photos of this lovely book can be found on the Libraries flickr page.

Darwin Anniversary Symposium: We Have the Books!

Mannen van beteekenis in onze dagen ; -- d. 6, 1876?, Portrait of Charles Darwin

This well-attended event at the National Museum of Natural History on September 12, 2009, featured ten speakers, with an introduction by Cristián Samper who reminded the audience that next year is the 100th anniversary of the Museum, which owns the largest natural history collection in the world.  Janet Browne focused on the role of anniversaries in reviewing, reassessing, boosting, or "rebooting" theories in biology. Jonathan Coddington observed how "tree thinking" in evolutionary biology was "invented" by Darwin, prospered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, then was forgotten for some time and is now back in favor. Jim Lake examined the role of cooperation in the evolution of prokaryotes, especially how two groups of prokaryotes, actinobacteria and clostridia, led to double-membrane prokaryotes (which include cyanobacteria, the photosynthetic organisms that made oxygen a significant component of earth's atmosphere). Gene Hunt noted that the fossil record helps understand the transformation of species as well as the history of life more broadly, and discussed gradualism, punctuated equilibrium, and stasis as models for the evolution of biological features. Peter Crane discussed the origin and early evolution of angiosperms. Douglas Erwin examined the Cambrian explosion, noting that "diversity begets diversity through a process of ecosystem engineering." Vladimir Nabokov, his serious interest in blue butterflies, and the evolutionary significance of butterfly wing color were the subject of  Naomi Pierce's talk. P.E. Ahlberg tackled the question as to whether fish fins and the limbs of terrestrial animals are not merely analogous but also homologous structures. Hans Sues discussed the fossil record for the origin of mammals.  Finally, Richard Potts gave an overview of what we have learned about evolution since Darwin, stressing the importance of adaptability.

The speakers cited several important books, all of which are part of the Libraries' collections. If you'd like to take a(nother) look at some of these classics in natural history, you can find them in the Libraries catalog:

• Browne, Janet. Charles Darwin.  London: Jonathan Cape, 1995-
• Lamarck, Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de, 1744-1829. Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres.  Paris: J.B. Baillière, 1835-45.
• Cuvier, Georges, baron, 1769-1832. Le règne animal distribué d'après son organisation, pour servir de base à l'histoire naturelle des animaux, et d'introduction à l'anatomie comparée.  Paris: Deterville, 1817.
• Prothero, Donald R. Evolution: what the fossils say and why it matters.  New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
• Hughes, Norman F.  Palaeobiology of angiosperm origins: problems of Mesozoic seed-plant evolution.   Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
• Origin and early evolution of angiosperms. Charles B. Beck, ed.  New York: Columbia University Press, 1976.
• White, M. J. D. (Michael James Denham), 1910- Modes of speciation. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, c1978.
• Johnson, Kurt, and Steven L. Coates. Nabokov's blues: the scientific odyssey of a literary genius. Cambridge, Mass.: Zoland Books, 1999.

This was also the opening day for the much-awaited exhibition,  Since Darwin: The Evolution of Evolution.

A few images from the symposium and exhibition are available here.

The History of Postcards

The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum Library boasts more than 10,000 postcards in its “hidden” collection. Arranged by subject in card file drawers, they range in date from the turn of the century to the 1990’s. In our last post, the architecture of New York and Los Angeles was featured. In this third post, the Libraries will feature the history of postcards.

Sending postcards did not appear out of thin air.  A number of innovations in the postal system in the preceding quarter of a century helped create this new postal age. One such innovation was the introduction of uniform penny postage in Great Britain in 1840 that made mail delivery easy and affordable. Previously, prices for shipping letters was based on the distance the mailman had to travel. Fees were not collected up-front from the sender, but instead a surprised recipient would find a mailman on his or her doorstep, demanding payment. Post offices had been hemorrhaging money through this system, for recipients would often refuse their mail and the postman would be sent away unpaid. In 1837 Rowland Hill proposed that letters be charged by weight, not distance, and the fee be collected in advance from the sender. This new procedure transformed the postal system.

Austria was the first country to publish the postcard, but not the first to conceive of it.  A few years earlier, German postal official Dr. Heinrich von Stephan submitted a proposal for such an object, which was fiercely debated and not executed in North Germany until July 1870, a year after Austria introduced the card to their country. Within two years, the postcard had quickly spread across Europe. The United States did not introduce officially issued postcards until 1873, two years after Canada and three years after most European countries, but unlike these countries, stamped cards had been allowed in American mail since 1861. In 1875, delegates of 22 countries met in Switzerland as the General Postal Union and established a standard postage rate and government issued card to be exchanged between countries in the union; four years later they renamed themselves the Universal Postal Union.

Printing technology quickly advanced in nineteenth century Germany and Parisian publishers experimented with special edition postcard sets by the most eminent artists of the time. In Great Britain, artistic innovations in postcard design were slowed by the British postal authorities’ ban on larger-dimensioned cards, whose measurements were standard in most European countries in the Universal Postal Union.

Postcards were a way to send friends and family a snapshot of one’s travels and surroundings, even photographs of one’s home. A sizable portion of the Cooper-Hewitt Library's collection depicts scenes from British and French colonies, including scenes from Morocco, Egypt, and India. Women in many of these cards cover their faces with a burqa or veil. These cards may be valuable for researchers interested in the iconography of indigenous people in colonies, particularly the circulation of this imagery in the Occident.

The collection also contains many peculiar and exotic scenes or events, including natural disasters. A series of photographic cards trace the aftermath of the 1908 Dallas flood; men in bowler hats sail past flooded electrical poles and submerged taverns in make-shift rowboats; men in suits sit atop floating train cars, waiting for help.

Stay tuned for more postcard fun...—Sara O'Keeffe