The City of Vancouver Archives is pleased to announce the public release of the first batch of records from the British Columbia Sugar Refining Company fonds (BC Sugar), donated to the Archives in 2011 by Lantic Inc.

The records of BC Sugar document the activities of Vancouver’s first large-scale industrial operation that was not a sawmill or related to the railways. The company continues to operate its historic refinery on Vancouver’s waterfront to this day.

Fire insurance plan of the British Columbia Sugar Refining Co. Ld. Vancouver B.C., May 1899, Chas E. Goad. Reference code: AM1572-S8-: 2011-092.0113.

This first release (of three) focuses on the core business records of the company and its subsidiaries, and includes records that cover a wide variety of BC Sugar’s activities, such as:

• the formation of the company in 1890 and that of its holding company (BC Sugar Refinery, Ltd.) in 1899;
• Board of Directors and Annual General Meeting minutes until 1920;
• correspondence series from various Presidents and Vice-Presidents
• the foundation or acquisition and operations of subsidiaries in Manitoba, Fiji and the Dominican Republic;
• Vancouver refinery operations;
• international sugar trading;
• research on beet sugar cultivation and refining;
• promoting sugar use by Canadians;
• managing the company’s facilities, both in Canada and overseas;
• industrial relations with its employees, including records on the 1917 strike at the Vancouver refinery;
• relations with shareholders;
• company finances, including both public and private financial records;
• relations with other sugar companies; and
• how the company interacted with the federal, provincial and Vancouver governments, including records relating to the federal government’s Combines Act investigation of BC Sugar in the late 1950s.

First two pages of the Minutes of the first Board Meeting of the British Columbia Sugar Refining Company, Limited, April 11, 1890. Reference code AM1592-S1-2-F1.

Detail from the first page of the meeting above, reference code AM1592-S1-2-F1.

The records provide insight into the operations and management of a company that was one of Vancouver’s most important employers from the late 19^th to the mid-20^th centuries, and how the company extended its reach across Western Canada and across the world.

Unexpected finds in this first release of records include records that document the growing and harvesting of sugar cane and beets, engineering drawings of refinery machinery, and historical publications on sugar production.

When BC Sugar acquired the Ozama sugar plantation and factory in the Dominican Republic in 1944, managers from Vancouver made a number of trips to investigate operations there. The fonds includes hundreds of photographs from these trips, made between 1944 and 1949, which document sugar cane production and harvesting, Ozama fields and factory, and the living environment for managers and plantation workers. The following photo depicts a tug boat that was used to travel through the district where the Ozama cane fields were located.

Tug Acadia. Reference code AM1592-S17-: 2011-092.6646.

The fonds includes a large number of engineering drawings of refinery equipment for various mills and refineries operated by BC Sugar and its subsidiaries.

Apparatus for evaporation of beet juices in beet sugar manufacture, “General Arrangement of Quadruple Effet 10,000 [square foot] H.S.”, The Mirrlees Watson Company Limited, 1905 (copied 197-?). Reference code: AM1592-S17-: 2011-092.6747.

The company collected publications on the history of sugar production and refining, including this 17^th century book on the history of Barbados, which includes a section on early sugar production on the island.

A true and exact history of the Island of Barbados, Richard Ligon, 1657. Reference code: AM1592-S22-F12.

Over the course of the year, two more releases of BC Sugar records will occur, including the records of Canadian Sugar Factories, BC Sugar’s Alberta subsidiary, as well as the collection of the BC Sugar Museum, including its extensive photographic holdings. Stay tuned for further information!

The City of Vancouver Archives would like to thank Lantic Inc. for its financial support for the archival processing of the BC Sugar fonds, which has made it possible for the Archives to make these records available to the public at this time.

This year the wonderful Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema featured a stunning new soundtrack to John Grierson’s Drifters by Jason Singh. Accompanied by members of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra Jason fused electronic effects, clattering beats and his own voice to create a striking contemporary response to Grierson’s 1929 documentary about North Sea fishermen. The energy and power of the film was heightened by Singh’s beat-boxing, the engines of the fishing trawlers fueled by his propulsive beats. His performance responded beautifully to the changes in tempo and tone in the film, voice and effects demonstrating the power of the waves crashing off the rocks, then quietening to reflect the underwater images of the shoals of herring sought by the trawlermen and the seagulls flying above the boats. The performance ended with a memorable recreation of the sounds of the bustling fishmarket where the trawlermen’s catch was bought and sold. After the elemental sounds of the sea and the mechanical hum of the trawlers the babble of voices brought us back to land.

An underwater scene from John Grierson’s 1929 documentary Drifters.

Drifters was made at a turning point in the history of cinema when silent films were beginning to be replaced by the ‘talkies’ and the use of sound in films was becoming more common. Grierson was quick to realise the potential of sound and his archive includes a printed document distributed to cinemas providing a scene-by-scene musical accompaniment to the film. The recommendations are divided into two sections. The first provides popular tunes to be played by a cinema orchestra, while the second lists gramophone recordings of classical music for cinemas without musicians. These were to be played using “non-synchronous tables” (gramophones set up to play likes today’s DJ turntables). As the fishermen prepared their nets before casting them into the sea Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave Part 1 was to be played. Later in the film the threat of the gathering storm clouds was accompanied by Wagner’s Flying Dutchman Overture. Grierson was keen to utilise the technological advances of this time to enhance his pioneering documentary – Jason Singh uses 21^st century techniques and equipment to breathe new life into the film for contemporary audiences.

Suggested musical accompaniment for Drifters (ref. Grierson Archive, G2.1.3)

The following essay was written for the December, 1942  WQXR Program Guide by the Elliott M. Sanger, Executive Vice President  and Co-founder of the Interstate Broadcasting Company, Inc., WQXR’s owner.

An acute observer of the passing scene once made the statement that everybody these days has two businesses: his own and radio. There is more than a grain of truth in that remark and we who are active in running radio stations certainly know it. All we have to do is open our morning’s mail to find out what listeners would do if they were in our place.

It is those very suggestions which are our best way of finding out what the WQXR audience really wants. Of course some letters come from “cranks” who have a pet idea they think the world is waiting for, but most of our letters come from people who are deeply interested in radio as the newest means of mass communication and who sincerely believe they have ways to improve it. We welcome such letters. Many suggestions we have received from unprofessional radio critics have helped us decide what the WQXR public wants.

But who is this “public?” And particularly what sort of people like good music? What kind of people listen to WQXR?

If you ask those questions of a dozen people you will probably get a dozen different answers. We know, because for many years we tried to find out that way. Some experts even told us that only rich people liked good music. Others said that music appealed only to those who sat in the galleries of the Met or Carnegie and that the people who sat in the better seats really did not enjoy music but went only to see and to be seen. Then we were informed in no uncertain terms that you had to be high-brow to enjoy a concert and that no one really had a good time listening to the symphonies of Beethoven or the music-dramas of Wagner. Of course the opposite point of view was just as emphatic: Music had only an emotional appeal and really intelligent people never went to concerts or listened to music over the radio –they simply curled up with a good book.

After almost seven years of studying the radio audience for good music, we at WQXR think we know the answers. All those who had their own prejudices about the WQXR audience were right. Music is not the property of any one group; it is the heritage of people of all educational and economic gradations.

That does not mean that everybody enjoys great music, but included in that vast group of people whom we call “music-lovers” you will find a cross-section of the population which seems to have the same human attributes and frailties as any other mass. For want of a better word, perhaps “cultural” is the best adjective to describe the common denominator of the WQXR family of listeners. And by cultural we do not mean “high-brow.” You would be surprised to know how many taxi-drivers are found with their cab radios tuned to WQXR. For every college professor who keeps his dial at 1560, there are thousands just as loyal to the station who have never seen the inside of a college lecture room.

Recently we decided to make a scientific study of the economic background of the WQXR audience. The commercial department thought it would be useful for our sponsors to know just how much money our listeners had to spend upon food and drink and taxes. So we told a research agency to analyze a random group of WQXR listeners and tell us about them.

Investigators made personal calls upon 1,348 families living in the five boroughs of Greater New York, Northern New Jersey, Westchester and Nassau. What they found out was so interesting to us that we are passing along some of the information to you, with the thought that you may be curious about other people who listen to WQXR.

The survey confirmed that all WQXR families live neither on Park Avenue nor in the slums, though they did find some in both places. In case you are statistically inclined, here are the results: Only 9.6 percent were classed as “A” incomes–the upper brackets. On the other hand, 40.4 percent were in the “B” group, which is roughly defined as “comfortable.” The next lower group economically showed 37.4 percent and the lowest division, called “D” incomes, contained 12.6 percent of WQXR devotees. 

Here at last we had statistical proof of our own conclusions: that there are music-lovers all over. The lovers of classical music may not be numerically as great as those who prefer jazz, but they certainly are universal. And the most gratifying result of the investigation is the emphasis it places on the great middle class of “B” and “C” incomes which give a combined percentage of 77.8.

The people who listen to WQXR don’t live in ivory towers. They just live the way you and I do. The man who is hanging on the strap next to you in the subway crush, the woman in the ermine coat waiting for her car to pull up to Carnegie Hall, the traffic cop at your corner, are your fellow members in the WQXR club. It’s an ever growing club, and we hope all of you are glad you are members. 

Elliott M. Sanger (3rd from left) and staff at a remote WQXR broadcast during World War II. The man with the headphones appears to be announcer Charles S. Freed.  (Columbia University Library and Special Collections)

____________________________________

*Editor note: For many years “good music” was a euphemism for classical music.

Celebrity trumps all.

Lawyer, financier, ambassador and US Senator Dwight W. Morrow (Amherst class of 1895) had a brilliant career in business and diplomacy, despite dying at only 58. In the 1920s, his name was often mentioned as a top prospect for Secretary of State or even President. As Ambassador to Mexico (1927-1930) he was very successful, not just for representing American interests (oil, primarily), but for playing an important role in negotiating a solution to the Cristero War in Mexico, which pitted the ruling government against the Catholic Church. His frequent breakfast meetings with Mexican President Calles caused him to be dubbed “the ham and eggs diplomat” by newspaper reporters.

But alas, in the cruel compendium of popular history, what is Morrow mainly known for? Being the father-in-law of Charles Lindbergh. In his recent best-selling pop history of 1920s America (One Summer: America, 1927), Bill Bryson simply characterizes Morrow as a comical tippler with a tendency to be frighteningly absent-minded. Regrettable.

Bryson was describing Colonel Lindbergh’s famous visit in December 1927 as the special guest of Ambassador Morrow in Mexico City. After Lindbergh’s achievement of the first non-stop oceanic flight in May 1927 from New York to Paris — an accomplishment that immediately made him spectacularly famous — Morrow served as his financial adviser at J. P. Morgan and Co.

Lindbergh lore has it that the aviator put up $2,000 of his own money to fund his transatlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis. While this is true, Morrow and his associates at J.P. Morgan & Co. came up later with $10,000 to underwrite the expenses, as these letters show. [Morrow Papers, Series I, box 31, folder 47]

Shortly after Morrow became Ambassador to Mexico, he invited Lindbergh to Mexico City to promote good relations between the two countries. “As one interested in Mexico, in aviation, and in you personally,” Morrow wrote to Lindbergh a month earlier, “I am exceedingly anxious that you should fly down here.”

Mexico City, 1927. At center, Ambassador Morrow is flanked by Charles Lindbergh (l.) and the famous humorist, columnist and actor Will Rogers (r.). [Morrow Papers, Series III, Scrapbook 2]

Morrow’s professed interest in aviation was well established. Two years earlier, he had been appointed by his friend and fellow Amherst alum President Calvin Coolidge (AC 1896) to take charge of the President’s Aircraft Board. This advisory commission of military, political, and civilian experts investigated all aspects of American aviation — a field in which the US, at that time, was lagging far behind Europe in commercial development, safety, standards and regulation. Lindbergh’s flight to Paris was a stellar achievement for American aviation, and the man did have interesting things to say about its future, so it was only natural that Morrow was keenly interested in getting to know him more intimately.

Lindbergh accepted the invitation and flew to Mexico City in mid-December 1927, where he (and his mother) stayed through the Christmas holiday. He parlayed the journey into a lengthy flying tour of Central America, a portion of South America and the Caribbean:

His visit to Mexico was famous because it was here that he met and fell in love with his future wife, Dwight Morrow’s daughter Anne, a pretty 21-year-old senior at Smith College. Her mother’s scrapbook records the event this way:

Morrow Papers, Series III, Scrapbook 2, p. 63.

Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow

Since Lindbergh was then the focus of wild-eyed hero worship, newspapers covered his every movement. When news of the engagement came out in early 1928 (some papers erroneously reporting that his fiancée was not Anne but her younger sister Constance!), it broke the hearts of thousands of American girls.

Mr. and Mrs. Morrow with Lindbergh in Mexico City, 1927. Sitting on the floor: Constance Morrow, who for a short time was mistakenly reported to be Lindbergh’s love interest. [Morrow Papers, Series XIV, box 1, folder 31]

The Morrow-Lindbergh wedding plans were covered exhaustively in the newspapers; the event marked the advent of modern celebrity obsession in the new mass media. The Morrows (probably intentionally) hinted to the press that the wedding would take place in the summer of 1929 at their Maine residence; but instead, it was held in secret at the family’s Englewood (NJ) estate in May.

The American public’s obsession with the Lindbergh couple, which is palpably documented in the Morrow family scrapbooks, sickeningly foreshadows the immense personal tragedy that came in 1932 with the kidnapping and murder of their first child, Charles Lindbergh, Jr. That grim event, which also became a public spectacle (famously characterized by H.L. Mencken as “the greatest story since the Resurrection”), sent the Lindberghs into voluntary exile in Europe for the remainder of the decade.

Celebrity trumps all.

Lawyer, financier, ambassador and US Senator Dwight W. Morrow (Amherst class of 1895) had a brilliant career in business and diplomacy, despite dying at only 58. In the 1920s, his name was often mentioned as a top prospect for Secretary of State or even President. As Ambassador to Mexico (1927-1930) he was very successful, not just for representing American interests (oil, primarily), but for playing an important role in negotiating a solution to the Cristero War in Mexico, which pitted the ruling government against the Catholic Church. His frequent breakfast meetings with Mexican President Calles caused him to be dubbed “the ham and eggs diplomat” by newspaper reporters.

But alas, in the cruel compendium of popular history, what is Morrow mainly known for? Being the father-in-law of Charles Lindbergh. In his recent best-selling pop history of 1920s America (One Summer: America, 1927), Bill Bryson simply characterizes Morrow as a comical tippler with a tendency to be frighteningly absent-minded. Regrettable.

Bryson was describing Colonel Lindbergh’s famous visit in December 1927 as the special guest of Ambassador Morrow in Mexico City. After Lindbergh’s achievement of the first non-stop oceanic flight in May 1927 from New York to Paris — an accomplishment that immediately made him spectacularly famous — Morrow served as his financial adviser at J. P. Morgan and Co.

Lindbergh lore has it that the aviator put up $2,000 of his own money to fund his transatlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis. While this is true, Morrow and his associates at J.P. Morgan & Co. came up later with $10,000 to underwrite the expenses, as these letters show. [Morrow Papers, Series I, box 31, folder 47]

Shortly after Morrow became Ambassador to Mexico, he invited Lindbergh to Mexico City to promote good relations between the two countries. “As one interested in Mexico, in aviation, and in you personally,” Morrow wrote to Lindbergh a month earlier, “I am exceedingly anxious that you should fly down here.”

Mexico City, 1927. At center, Ambassador Morrow is flanked by Charles Lindbergh (l.) and the famous humorist, columnist and actor Will Rogers (r.). [Morrow Papers, Series III, Scrapbook 2]

Morrow’s professed interest in aviation was well established. Two years earlier, he had been appointed by his friend and fellow Amherst alum President Calvin Coolidge (AC 1896) to take charge of the President’s Aircraft Board. This advisory commission of military, political, and civilian experts investigated all aspects of American aviation — a field in which the US, at that time, was lagging far behind Europe in commercial development, safety, standards and regulation. Lindbergh’s flight to Paris was a stellar achievement for American aviation, and the man did have interesting things to say about its future, so it was only natural that Morrow was keenly interested in getting to know him more intimately.

Lindbergh accepted the invitation and flew to Mexico City in mid-December 1927, where he (and his mother) stayed through the Christmas holiday. He parlayed the journey into a lengthy flying tour of Central America, a portion of South America and the Caribbean:

His visit to Mexico was famous because it was here that he met and fell in love with his future wife, Dwight Morrow’s daughter Anne, a pretty 21-year-old senior at Smith College. Her mother’s scrapbook records the event this way:

Morrow Papers, Series III, Scrapbook 2, p. 63.

Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow

Since Lindbergh was then the focus of wild-eyed hero worship, newspapers covered his every movement. When news of the engagement came out in early 1928 (some papers erroneously reporting that his fiancée was not Anne but her younger sister Constance!), it broke the hearts of thousands of American girls.

Mr. and Mrs. Morrow with Lindbergh in Mexico City, 1927. Sitting on the floor: Constance Morrow, who for a short time was mistakenly reported to be Lindbergh’s love interest. [Morrow Papers, Series XIV, box 1, folder 31]

The Morrow-Lindbergh wedding plans were covered exhaustively in the newspapers; the event marked the advent of modern celebrity obsession in the new mass media. The Morrows (probably intentionally) hinted to the press that the wedding would take place in the summer of 1929 at their Maine residence; but instead, it was held in secret at the family’s Englewood (NJ) estate in May.

The American public’s obsession with the Lindbergh couple, which is palpably documented in the Morrow family scrapbooks, sickeningly foreshadows the immense personal tragedy that came in 1932 with the kidnapping and murder of their first child, Charles Lindbergh, Jr. That grim event, which also became a public spectacle (famously characterized by H.L. Mencken as “the greatest story since the Resurrection”), sent the Lindberghs into voluntary exile in Europe for the remainder of the decade.

Picture yourself on a weekend retreat in a rented cabin in the woods, not far from your home. Although you love the isolation (no wi-fi, no TV), you would like to listen to your favorite radio show on Saturday afternoon¹. After looking around, you find a cheap clock radio in the bedroom and, at the appointed time, you fiddle with the (maddeningly small) tuner wheel, tune the (analog) dial, and hope that your favorite station’s signal reaches your receiver’s dinky little antenna.

The above scenario can be an allegory for how audio archivists deal with obsolete formats. The challenges, decisions, and satisfactions are remarkably similar. This makes sense: after all, both radio listeners and audio archivists are interested in access to distant audio; it’s just that the former measure distance in miles and the latter in years. Despite the differences, the scenario above describes the two factors involved in extracting audio from obsolete formats: (1) quality of the signal itself, and (2) available resources. Let’s look at each in turn.

1. Signal quality

In broadcasting, the original audio signal is “embedded” in what is called the “carrier” signal. This allows the audio to travel big distances, but the downside is that the signal must be decoded (demodulated is the technical term) at the other end using specialized equipment, which can range in complexity from crystal radios to high-end receivers.

The fates of content and carrier are deeply intertwined. Although radio signals get progressively weaker with distance, the quality of your reception often has more to do with what kind of obstacles (from mountains to solar flares) the wave has encountered on its particular path to your receiver.

Audio signals from the past are also embedded in “carriers,” which in this case means a physical format such as cassettes, records, or wax cylinders; and, just as with radio waves, if we want to hear the content we must extract the audio on our end with a specialized device —a cassette deck, say, or a contraption such as the Archaeophone, used to play wax cylinders.

Physical carriers also degrade with time.  The decay is usually slow and predictable, but specific events —from scratches on a cylinder to dropping your iPod in the toilet— can affect the quality of the signal within. The content may still be there, but retrieving it surely becomes progressively harder the longer you wait. Which brings us to our second factor: resources.

2. Available resources

In our allegory, notice how you had to find a specific machine that could retrieve the signal (the clock radio), and then adjust it for decent reception —some effort was necessary. But you could have gone much further. You may have had to move the clock radio to a different room for better reception (or any reception at all); you may have been dissatisfied with the quality on the dinky speaker, prompting you to seek a better receiver; you could have even traveled to a location closer to the transmitting antenna.

The amount of effort placed will likely affect the quality of the signal you hear, but you can also go overboard: should you go to the local store and buy a new, ultra high-end stereo system, just for this one broadcast? Where you stop is a decision you make at the time, and it most likely depends on how badly (and how well) you want to listen to that broadcast. Hopefully, your effort brings a commensurate satisfaction, although it is often hard to determine that beforehand.

In audio archiving we cannot get closer in time to the original recording (although there are exceptions, besides time travel), but we often have similar options to the ones described above. Although the content within a carrier is seldom irretrievably lost² (a magnetic signal embedded in audio tape, for example, is remarkably robust), the effort necessary to retrieve it (and retrieve it well) from a carrier generally increases with time, and eventually may not be worth it.

An additional complication is that audio archivists often deal with obsolete formats for which players and their corresponding support infrastructure barely exist. (It is as if your station were not only far away, but broadcasting on shortwave:  the effort necessary to retrieve such a signal with good audio will probably be much higher) Although as of this writing, virtually all audio formats are playable given enough resources, the necessary machines and technical knowledge are often in the hands and heads of increasingly few experts³.

Once again, it all depends on how badly (and how well) you want to listen to the content. In other words, (and not surprisingly): content is king. And as availability of content multiplies, decisions to use resources to access vintage audio may become more managerial in nature. But it may be useful to remember that, in the end, only two basic factors determine those decisions.

Read Part 2: Hello Future, Can You Hear Me?

¹On WNYC or WQXR, no doubt

²There are exceptions to this, but there are also ways to extend many carriers’ lifetimes

³There are some reversals within this trend, however. For example, the increased availability of playback machines, parts, and manuals on ebay may be the greatest thing that ever happened to audio archiving.

When I was a kid growing up in Beverly, MA, every morning I would walk by the site of the cotton mill visited by George Washington. That mill, the Beverly Cotton Manufactory, even predated Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, which was patented 220 years ago today!

Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin Patent Drawing, 03/14/1794

From Records of the Patent and Trademark Office, National Archives Identifier 305886… [ Read all ]

The annual celebration of Sunshine Week reminds us of the need for greater transparency in government and greater public access to government information. As part of the initiative to promote freedom of information, we, the members of the Public Interest Declassification Board, renew our call on the need to transform our nation’s security classification system. Our 2012 Report to the President provides recommendations that will serve our citizens and our government in the digital age we live in and provides meaninful access to declassified national security information.

The climate of suspicion surrounding the management of national security information requires a new approach to access that promotes “more sunshine earlier.” Under the current system, the public waits 25 or even 50 years or more for declassification to automatically occur. The two channels for requesting access to national security information (one the Freedom of Information Act, the other being Manadatory Declassification Review) are bogged down with long queues and uneven reviews. Subjective declassification decisions are often dependent on the quality and care of individual reviewers and challenging agencies on these reviews is a long and arduous process.

We believe we need an entirely new construct to perform declassification efficiently and effectively across government. The challenges of managing information created in the era of Big Data require new and innovating thinking, new policies and new beliefs about information if we are ever going to be able to modernize the security classification system. Rote declassification is not the way forward and will not increase nor improve access to government information.

In our 2012 Report to the President, we made a series of recommendations on how best to transform the security classification system. We believe that Sunshine Week is an opportune time to revisit those recommendations and renew the call for increased access to information, a fundamental tenet inherent to our democracy.

During Sunshine Week, our members will participate in and attend events highlighting the importance of citizen access to government information. Throughout the week, Congressional hearings, newspaper editorials, campus gatherings and events across our nation invite citizens to participate in the dialogue of promoting freedom of information and government transparency. There are over 30 events listed on the Sunshine Week website, http://sunshineweek.org. We encourage your participation at these events during Sunshine Week and look forward to hearing about your experiences on our blog.

Today we are saddened to mark the passing of Reubin O’Donovan Askew, FSU alumnus, professor, and former Governor of Florida. Askew, born in Muskogee, Oklahoma on September 11, 1928, died early this morning surrounded by family members at Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare, he was 85. He served as Governor from 1971 to 1979 and as U.S. trade Representative from 1979-1980.

Previous to his long and eventful political career, Askew was an active student at Florida State. After serving in the United States Army from 1946-1948, he attended FSU on the G.I. Bill and became Class President during his sophomore year in 1949, a member of the University Senate in 1950, and as a senior, served as President of the University Government Association in 1951. Since 1995 he had been on the faculty here at FSU, and was also the Senior Fellow of the Florida Institute of Government. Since 2000, he was the Eminent Scholar Chair at the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy teaching Florida Government & Politics, and held 15 honorary doctorates from institutions around the nation. 
Askew was known as a champion for racial and gender equality and was the impetus for many “firsts” in Florida. He integrated the Florida Highway Patrol, appointed the first black Supreme Court justice of a Southern state, appointed the first black member of the Cabinet in over a hundred years, created the five regional water management districts, made the Public Service Commission appointed rather than elected, called for rehabilitation rather than the jailing of alcoholics. One of his most notable acts was to pardon Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee, two black men wrongly convicted by an all-white jury and sent to Death Row in the killing of two gas station attendants in Port St. Joe, Florida.

A few weeks ago Occasional Nuggets subscribers got a bonus issue highlighting a little gem I had noticed for the first time and wanted to immediately send out:

It’s a small leather telescoping box containing twenty-six little sketches, each one representing a letter of the alphabet as a natural feature in the landscape. Here’s the card for “K”:

Rather than do any research to figure out what this thing actually is, I decided just to scan the cards and send them out to the Occasional Nuggets readers, who, it turns out, are pretty smart folks. Within a few days I had a couple responses pointing to an 1830 publication called The Landscape Alphabet, which was produced in two lithographed versions by G. Engelmann, Graf, Coindet & Co. in 1830. One version was done in standard codex form, but the other was done on individual cards (the same size as ours) with embossed borders stamped with the paper maker’s name, “Dobbs” (just like ours). The card version was, in turn, based on a series of pen-sketches done by an artist indicated only by the initials “EK”. (The original cards are now in the collections of the Pierpont Morgan Library.)

Here’s an image from an article by Michael Twyman that appeared in the journal Typography Papers (you can even buy your own copy), where the original pen and ink drawing (top) is compared to the lithographed version published on the cards:

It’s immediately apparent that what we have is related, but it’s equally apparent that our version is not in fact the lithographed 1830 publication. Take the scene at the bottom left, for instance:

Litho version:

Our version: 

They’re close, but not quite the same (note that bundle on the right is sideways to the viewer in our copy and end-on in the lithographed version).

So what’s going on? In his article Twyman quotes a contemporary reviewer of Engelmann’s Landscape Alphabet who declares that “The value of this little work will probably be found to consist in the stimulus it will afford to the very young students of drawing, form exact copies of the scenes here affixed to them….”

Our copy seems to be an example of just that kind of copying: pencil sketches that do their best to mimic the original (25 years after the publication of the original, if the date of 1855 on the box is an indicator of when they were produced).

But that answer just prompts more questions. The cards our anonymous artist used aren’t just similar to the originals, they’re the same size, made by the same company and featuring the same embossing. The 1830 lithograph set was sold in a publisher’s box that seems to be the same size and format (sliding open in the middle) but featured a label that functioned like a title page. Were blank cards and boxes sold for this express purpose? Or was it a standard format before it was used by Engelmann in 1830? If you’ve got the answers, let me know.

In the video below, Jennifer Pahlka, U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer, invites you to make a difference and serve your country by applying to become a Presidential Innovation Fellow. This is the third round of the Presidential Innovation Fellows. Projects from the first two rounds included: making government data more openly available, programs to assist Veterans, streamlining processes for citizens to find information and government services, and projects to assist American businesses. You can find out more about these first and second round projects on the Innovation Fellows website.

We are excited that this is the first time a National Archives project is featured! For our project, “Crowdsourcing Tools to Unlock Government Records,” innovators will lead the open development of crowdsourcing tools for the public to easily contribute to government records at the National Archives and improve the effectiveness of crowdsourcing across the government.

Presidential Innovation Fellows will build upon our crowdsourcing efforts, which have included the Citizen Archivist Dashboard, transcription projects, scan-a-thons, and collaboration with Wikipedia, to usher in a new generation of open development of crowdsourcing tools.

Do you want to make a difference in government? Apply today!

)

 … [ Read all ]

Just a quick note to mention that our Bodoni event last week was terrific fun. Matthew Carter regaled a packed auditorium…

… with tales of type design, including the pleasure of discovering that you (or at least your typeface) have made the cover of the Rolling Stone and that the designer “got” what you were intending:

More photos of the evening are available on the Library’s Facebook page.

And don’t forget that the exhibition will be on display in the Library’s Providence Journal Rhode Island Room (Level 1) until April 19th. And if you want even more Bodoni in your life, send an email and set up a time to come in and look at the rest of the collection, which is not on display in the exhibition but is available for use any time.

The following statement was published in the May, 1944 WQXR Program Guide.

For some months the management of WQXR has been studying the problem of “singing commercials” and advertising “jingles.” Starting with a prohibition of this form of advertising on our evening broadcasts, we have found the audience response to the policy so favorable that we have extended the ban to the daytime hours as well.

Only a few advertisers are affected by the new ruling and their spots will be permitted to continue until the expiration of their contracts. All of these are short-term contracts which will expire within the next few weeks.

Because WQXR specializes in the presentation of good music, the station has found that “singing commercials” are too much of a transition from good music and that they are apt to create ill will among WQXR listeners for the advertiser as well as the station. On the other hand, WQXR listeners have always supported enthusiastically those advertisers who presented their sales messages in keeping with the programs  of the station.

This is not a ban of all transcribed announcements. Spots containing other types of music conforming to the station’s musical policy will continue to be accepted. For example, an excerpt from a musical production–such as an opera, operetta or motion picture–may be included in an announcement advertising such a production, if the musical selection fits in with the musical standards of the station.

As to non-musical transcriptions, WQXR will continue to accept those which are in keeping with station programming.

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*Editor’s Note: In December, 1936 WQXR became the nation’s first full-time commercial classical music station. It wasn’t until October, 2009, when it was acquired by New York Public Radio, that its broadcasts became non-commercial. For more history see: WQXR at 75.

After a long and crazy winter (weather-wise), the Preserving Local History team is hard at work completing our research and getting ready for a series of presentations and meetings.  The Undergraduate Research Expo, which is coming up in the next few weeks, is one presentation that I in particular am excited to participate in – more details on those preparations and results will come over the course of the next few weeks.

In the meantime, I have been making calls and sending emails to organizations that we have identified as potential survey contributors.  This process is challenging, because most of the calls being made are cold calls – we have not spoken with these organizations before.  There has, however, been a lot of progress made and a lot of people seem interested in participating in the project.  Many people seem to be surprised at the prospect of a community website/database – many are also surprised that this research group is providing the services and advice free of charge.

Stephen and Megan are hoping to  visit a few of the local organizations that completed the survey during the fall to further assess their needs and to digitize a few items as well as collect information on their overall  archives. I have not had as much of a role as far as field visits or meetings because of my schedule (I am tied up with student teaching at Northwest High School – GO VIKINGS! – this semester).  However, I know that progress is being made, and if my data and work are any indication of what is going on with the other members of the team, I feel certain that we will have a successful and informative semester.

If you know of a local organization or group that would be interested in participating in our study, please email preservinglocalhistorygso@gmail.com for more information.

-Rachel Sanders-