Smithsonian Libraries

Happy Ferris Wheel Day!

Typically, February 14th is a day set aside for love, flowers and candy. For those in a less romantic spirit, we suggest celebrating Ferris Wheel Day instead! Ferris Wheel Day celebrates the birthday of George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. and his most famous invention. 

This image, from Hubert Howe Bancroft's The book of the fair : an historical and descriptive presentation of the world's science, art, and industry, as viewed through the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893 (Chicago, San Francisco: The Bancroft Company, 1895), shows the very first Ferris Wheel at the Columbian Exposition's Midway Plaisance. Ferris build the attraction, sometimes know as the "Chicago Wheel", as a landmark for the Fair. After being dismantled and rebuilt multiple times all over the country, it was finally destroyed in 1906.

Bancroft's work, featured here, is one of many titles on World's Fairs and Expositions in the Smithsonian Libraries collections. Both the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum branches have extensive holdings on the subject. See our selected bibliography here for more information.

Joyeux anniversaire, Jules Verne!

 

Today, February 8th, 2012, marks the 184th anniversary of the birth of French science fiction pioneer Jules Verne. Verne was a visionary writer who took 19th century scientific inventions to wondrous levels in his books.

The Smithsonian Libraries has several early editions of works by Verne. To learn more, visit "A Jules Verne Centennial: 1905-2005".

 

 

 

 

 

Image: Science and Invention, Vol. VIII, No. 4, Aug. 1920 , 1920.

Happy 100th Birthday to the State of New Mexico!

Today, January 6th, marks the 100th anniversary of New Mexico's statehood. In 1848, the land was cededed to the United States by Mexico via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the territory was later admitted as a state of the union in 1912 when President Taft signed the statehood declaration.

 

This image, showing the entrance of an adobe home in Paguate,  was taken by photographer Edward S. Curtis, ca 1925. His  tome The North American Indian attempted to chronicle what he called a "vanishing race". The Smithsonian Libraries holds a complete set of his work, donated by Mrs. Edward H. Harriman, whose husband had conducted an expedition to Alaska, with Curtis as photographer, in 1899. To learn more about Curtis, click through our online exhibit here. To learn more about the State of New Mexico and their centennial activities click here.