Smithsonian Libraries

Le quatorze juillet

Happy Bastille Day!

Lieutenant-colonel (Ninian) Pinkney, Travels through the south of France and in the interior of the provinces of Provence and Languedoc, in the years 1807 and 1808, 1814, Map of France

Just one perfect rose?

“Why is it no one ever sent me yet one perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it's always just my luck to get one perfect rose.”—Dorothy Parker

Robert John Thornton, New illustration of the sexual system of Carolus von Linnaeus . . . , 1807, Roses

There are many more wonderful images from this publication.—Elizabeth Periale

Singer reception

Above: The beauty of Botanica Magnifica was on display during the event

Below: Guests enjoy a rare opportunity to view an Audubon

On June 10, around 70 guests gathered for “Afternoon Tea with Audubon,” an event celebrating the gift of a double-elephant folio facsimile of John J. Audubon’s Birds of America to the Libraries.

This impressive and valuable work, published by Robert E. Abrams of Abbeville Press, and donated by Jonathan Singer, resides in the Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History in the National Museum of Natural History. In addition to a private viewing of this rare book, guests of the tea also got an up-close glance at Jonathan Singer’s famed Botanica Magnifica and the original printed folio of Audubon’s Birds of America.

Singer, Smithsonian research scientist and botany curator John Kress, and the Libraries’ own Leslie Overstreet, Daria Wingreen-Mason and Diane Shaw were on-hand to show attendees the three double-elephant folios and answer questions. Libraries Director Nancy E. Gwinn, Associate Director of the Museum of Natural History Hans Sues, and Jonathan Singer spoke at the event.—Liz O'Brien

The Great Kite Experiment

H. Wright Smith, "Benjamin Franklin."

June 15 is traditionally considered the date of Benjamin Franklin's experiment with a kite to prove that lightning was electrical in nature. The Libraries has recently published a very interesting piece about Franklin by Joyce E. Chaplin, Benjamin's Franklins Political Arithmetic: A Materialist View of Humanity. Excerpts can be read on this blog, the entire publication can be found on the Libraries website, or you can even request a copy from the Dibner Library.—Elizabeth Periale

Duck Tales

June 9, 1934 is recognized as Donald Duck's birthday. The Libraries has some fun, rare, and even thought-provoking titles that feature Mickey's aquatic bird sidekick (and his family).—Elizabeth Periale

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Library:

Walt Disney's Donald Duck and the haunted house: a moving picture book. Walt Disney Productions. New York Franklin Watts 1980.

Donald's camping trip. New York : Franklin Watts, c1977.

Smithsonian American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery Library:

Walt Disney's Donald's camping trip. Los Angeles, CA : Intervisual Communications, c1977.  

National Museum of American History Library:

Walt Disney's Donald Duck : 50 years of happy frustration [created, designed, and produced by Three Duck Editions Limited ; text, Flora O'Brien]. Tucson, Ariz. : HP Books, 1984.

How to read Donald Duck : imperialist ideology in the Disney comic / / Ariel Dorfman, Armand Mattelart ; translation & updated introduction by David Kunzle, with appendix by John Shelton Lawrence. Dorfman, Ariel. New York : International General, 1991.

National Air and Space Museum Library:

Walt Disney's Donald Duck in Disneyland, / told by Annie North Bedford [pseud.] Pictures by the Walt Disney Studio, adapted by Campbell Grant. Walt Disney Productions. New York, Simon and Schuster [1955].

Donald Duck up in the air by Walt Disney. Racine, Wisconsin : Whitman Publishing Company, c1945.

Photos by Elizabeth Broman

Happy Birthday Richard Scarry

Children's book author Richard Scarry was born today. The Libraries has a number of this classic author and illustrator's books in its collection, many of them considered rare:

At the National Museum of Air and Space Library:

Richard Scarry's great big air book, written and illustrated by Richard Scarry. New York, Random House [1971].

At the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum Library Bradley Rare Book Room:

A nonsense alphabet. Edward Lear. Pictures by Richard Scarry. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, c1962.

Asticot apprend l'alphabet. Richard Scarry. Traduit de l'américain par Marie Tenaille. [Paris]: Gautier-Languereau, c1988.

Richard Scarry's all around busytown!: a pop-up book with flaps and pull-tabs on all sides! Richard Scarry. New York: Little Simon, 2001.

Richard Scarry's pop-up time. Richard Scarry. Designed by Jim Deesing. Paper engineered by Bruce Reifel. New York, N.Y.: Simon Spotlight, c1997.

Richard Scarry's pop-up numbers. Richard Scarry. Paper engineering Renée Jablow. New York: Simon & Schuster, c1996.

Richard Scarry's pop-up colors. Richard Scarry. Paper engineered by Renée Jablow. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, c1996.

Richard Scarry's Busytown pop-up book. Paper engineering by Ib Penick. New York: Random House, c1979.

Image courtesy of Harper Collins

Up, up and away

Today commemorates the first Hot Air Balloon Flight By the Montgolfier brothers in 1783. A truly golden age of ballooning...—Elizabeth Periale

Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond, Description des Expériences de la Machine Aérostatique de MM. De Montgolfier, et de Celles Auxelles Cette Découverte a Donné Lieu, 1783

Schrödinger Manuscript Collection

He haunts physics textbooks. His cat is featured on T-shirts. He won a Nobel Prize.
Who is he? A newly digitized manuscript collection can help us find out!

Although Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger (1887 – 1961) addressed topics from DNA to color theory, he is best known for his contributions to quantum mechanics, the study of matter and energy on an electron-size scale. Four letters, a galley proof, and an envelope in SIL’s Dibner Library provide insight into his daily life.

An English letter to autograph collector Howes Norris, Jr. describes Schrödinger’s conception of knowledge and the human mind, in addition to offering advice for students nervous about exams. Since the mind contains knowledge “virtually, not actually, in the same way as the flint contains the spark,” an examiner should “act on them [students] as the steel does on the flint to display their virtual knowledge.” Next time you start to sweat about finals, remember Schrödinger’s take on the situation!

In three letters to friend and fellow physicist Hans Thirring, Schrödinger discusses his work, his plans, his travels, and a student. Thirring (1888 – 1976) studied physics in Austria, in addition to advocating pacificism and participating in Parliament.

The galley proof (copy of a text headed for publication and corrected by an editor) was to become part of a book. Alternating texts and equations discuss the application of wave mechanics to specific heats, the amounts of energy needed to raise the temperature of an amount of various substances by one degree Celsius.

Manuscripts like these catapult scientific giants like Schrödinger out of textbooks and into real life.

(Curious about the cat? Along with the equation that earned him a Nobel Prize, Schrödinger’s cat is one of the ideas for which the physicist is best known. You can find a description of the feline here and the merchandise it inspired here and here.)

- Nicole Yunger Halpern, Dibner Library intern

First Morse Code Message Sent from Washington DC to Baltimore in 1844

Portrait of Samuel Finley Breese Morse

Samuel Morse sent the first telegraphic message 165 years ago today.

The Libraries has many portraits of Morse in its digital collection, Scientific Identity: Portraits from the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, 2003.—Elizabeth Periale

19th-Century Mother-of-Pearl Photograph Album

We like to think we have many jewels in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries' collections in the figurative sense, but here is a lovely volume bound in precious mother-of-pearl with silver filigree ornamentation and gauffered (decorative blind-stamped) gilt edges, dating from the second half of the nineteenth century.

This exquisite book, currently on display through September 7, 2009 at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City as part of the exhibition Shahzia Sikander Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection, was most likely an album for a collection of photographic portraits. The album is empty now, but the names of the Italian revolutionary Garibaldi and the French author Chateaubriand are still faintly visible in pencil on the interior leaves, which are decorated to look like picture frames.

The story behind the creation and history of this particular album is only partly known. Most likely the volume is of European origin (for instance, the lithographed pages of the album feature the French copyright notice, Déposé). The remarkable workmanship of the jeweled cover, however, may have originated in the Middle East or Asia, where there is a long tradition of fashioning decorative items using mother-of-pearl. An old ink inscription on the front free endpaper of the volume is signed Angela Matilde Aròstegui y Castillo, either a former owner or perhaps someone who presented this album as a gift.

This volume was accessioned into the Cooper-Hewitt library's collections in 1959, where it aptly illustrates the power of the art of design, combining the utilitarian album format with precious materials to create an unforgettable historical artifact. (Z269.3.F55M68 1850z CHMRB)—Diane Shaw