Smithsonian Libraries

A Winter Vacation of the Past

This past summer, we featured travel and vacation related items, including ones about express steamers, a beach hotel, and a lake resort.  Each month this winter, we will do the same.  But this time we will feature winter vacation related items.  This month, we are featuring a 1906 brochure about The Court Inn.

 

Court Inn, Camden, SC.  Brochure, 1906, The Court Inn.

 

The Court Inn was a winter resort located in Camden, South Carolina.  The resort, which accommodated about 200 guests, opened each year on Thanksgiving Day.  The 1906 Brochure described the resort as having "every modern comfort and convenience, including electric lights, steam heat and open fireplaces, call bells, and bath-rooms, both public and private."

The resort had a lot of outdoor activities for guests to enjoy.  In front of the hotel, there was a garden with flowers and shrubs.  A five hundred foot long arched evergreen walkway and the Grove of Towering Pines was also located on the grounds.  Other outdoor activities included fishing and boating at a nearby lake, playing polo, and playing golf at the nearby Sarsfield Golf Club.

This 1906 Brochure about The Court Inn can be found in the Trade Literature Collection at the National Museum of American History Library.  Take a look at the Galaxy of Images to see more pages from this brochure.

Check back in January and February to read about other winter vacation resorts of the past!

-Alexia MacClain

The handwriting of Galileo

Would you like to see Galileo’s hand-writing?—I asked a visiting friend who came to see highlights of the Dibner Library in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries the other day. In the age of mobile devices, email messages, texting and the many other forms of digital communication are we still interested in the way someone writes by hand? Does that provide any other kind of information besides the text?

 

 

These questions came to me much later because my friend very quickly answered “yes” to my first question. So, I headed to the temperature and humidity controlled secure stacks to the manuscript section, where the library holds the ca. 1600 manuscript groups that were donated to the Smithsonian by Bern Dibner, 20^th century engineer, inventor and science historian, in 1976. I carefully removed the folder that contains the letter from the archival storage box and took it to the reading room where my friend was sitting. I told him about the content of the letter and its story which is interesting.

Galileo wrote this letter on May 12^th, 1635 (in Italian) replying to his colleague and supporter, the French amateur mathematician and natural philosopher, Nicolaus Claude Fabri de Preiresc. Their correspondence had started years earlier mainly about Preiresc’s repeated appeals to Cardinal Barberini (Pope Urban VIII) to lighten the restrictions of Galileo’s house arrest he was under due to his sentence at his 1633 trial. The letters (as this particular one too) discussed scientific topics as well, among them a curious water clock developed by Franciscus Linus in Liège.  The clock consisted of a small globe balancing and rotating in water contained in a larger round vessel. Next to the globe was a small fish hovering in the water and pointing to the numbers on the small globe showing the hour of the day. According to the letter, the clock was driven by a mysterious magnetic force. Galileo used the occasion of discussing Linus’s water clock to describe his own similar model that he developed some years earlier. Then he quickly added: “I, meanwhile, have wished to indicate […] that I have not usurped the invention from Father Linus—if indeed his machine does not have any more to it than mine.”

 

 

“Beautiful, even hand-writing”—said my friend looking at the letter—“It does not bespeak about a crushed, oppressed old man’s state of mind.” And this should remind us that, in fact, Galileo did not suffer in the casemates of the Inquisition, since he revoked some of his scientific ideas. This made it possible for him to have a prolific time during his years following the trial and publish one of his most significant works, the Discourses concerning two new sciences. The book, published in Leyden in 1638, is considered by many Galileo’s main contribution to physics, in which he laid down the foundations of the modern science of dynamics.

—Lilla Vekerdy

Digitization Dispatch: Etymology Edition!

According to a 1918 publication from silk manufacturers The Cheney Brothers, 'polka dots' are so called for a couple of reasons. First, a traveling dance instructor spotted a young woman performing an unfamiliar dance on the border of Poland and Bohemia. The dance instructor became enamoured with the exuberant half steps of the dance and began teaching it to students. He named the dance after the anonymous performer, the feminine form designating Polish citizenry: the Polka. At the same time, the presidential campaign of James Polk was underway. And as the dance spread around the globe, trade manufactures were eager to cash in on on the popularity of both the incoming US President and the dance. Early issues of catalogs begin to describe their wares as "polka gauze", "polka hats", and "polka shoes".

This month's digital collection highlight, Why do you call them Polka Dots?, neglects the origins of latter half of the phrase, but it could be that the word 'dot' (rather than "spot", say) comes into play because Morse's new communication language was utmost in the mind of the populace. Dots and dashes were on the tip of the collective tongue at the time. And whether or not the Cheney Brothers eytomological report is technically speaking the most accurate tracing of the term, the story highlights the ways consumer culture can creep into language. Enjoy!

How to dance the Polka

Cheney Brothers Silk

 

 

Wondrous Books in "The Great American Hall of Wonders"

Generally, the day after Thanksgiving is one of the busiest days of the year for Smithsonian museums. While some folks work off their turkey and pumpkin pie by hitting the shopping malls, others take to the National Mall and surrounding areas to view America's treasures.  If you're one of those merry museum-goers this Friday, consider a visit to "The Great American Hall of Wonders" at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

This grandly-titled exhibit celebrates the spirit of  American innovation by exploring art, mechanical inventions and scientific discoveries in the 19th century. It also features a handful of lovely books from our very own Smithsonian Libraries' collections, such as Alexander Wilson's American Ornithology, or, The natural history of the birds of the United States.

 

American Ornithology; or The natural history of the birds of the United States , 1808-1814.  Plate 6

 

Three other volumes on view are:

•  Statistical atlas of the United States based on the results of the ninth census 1870 (1874).  
• Report of the Geological exploration of the fortieth parallel . . ., 1870-1880, Vol 6.
• John D. Godman, American natural history, 1826-1828.

 

But you needn't hurry out on Black Friday to view the exhibit. It will be on display until January 8th of 2012. If you can't make it to DC, check out the Smithsonian American Art Museum's webpage for a slideshow and podcasts.