We’ve recently acquired a couple of fantastic books featuring photographs of early 20th century tattoos–one French, and one German.

The first book is a 1934 volume of Dr. J. Lacassagne’s Albums du Crocodile, improbably written for an audience of medical school alumni from the Hospices Civils de Lyon and focusing on tattoos in the French criminal underworld.

Title page of “Albums du Crocodile” showcasing a delightfully gothic French prisoner’s tattoo

Author Jean Lacassagne was the head of the prison medical service at Lyon, son of the founder of the Lyonnais School of Criminology.

The book’s photographs* feature mostly-anonymous, heavily-tattooed prisoners, both male and female, in various states of undress (and many completely nude). (*We want to acknowledge that it’s not clear whether the subjects of these photographs consented to the photography or whether they, more likely, were compelled to display their bodies and tattoos for the doctor’s camera.)

A jaunty French sailor in, ahem, scant clothing, with copious chest and arm tattoos.

Female prisoners are present only in a section about prostitutes, and the author considers their “low-quality” tattoos an early sign of impending ruin.

An example of a “vaccin d’amour” tattoo.

The only prisoner who is identified by name in this volume is Louis-Marius Rambert, referred to as “L’assassin d’Ecully.” (He and an accomplice murdered two people with a hammer, a crime for which he was sentenced to death.)

Rambert’s chest stars a “magnifique tatouage polychrome,” a pink, green, and blue image of an eagle fighting a dragon from a Shanghai tattoo artist.

As described in the caption above, Rambert willed his skin to author Lacassagne before his death by tuberculosis in 1934, as a sign of gratitude for the doctor’s services. Lacassagne carefully preserved the prisoner’s skin, and this colorful tattoo was later used in the binding of Rambert’s own manuscript memoirs. (!!!!!!) (We’d like to thank bookseller Brian Cassidy for drawing our attention to this gruesome story.)

The second book from this fascinating acquisition is the 1926 Bildnerei der Gefangenen, a book of prisoners’ art.

Title page of Bildnerei der Gefangenen, with a stunning reproduction of a watercolor.

Author Hans Prinzhorn was a psychiatrist who documented outsider art from mentally ill and incarcerated artists. This book includes sections on illustrations, clay sculptures, and playing cards, as well as thieves’ symbols and prisoners’ carvings.

A section at the end of the book features photos from the Hamburg police department of heavily tattooed men and women who were taken into police custody.

We noticed, upon close examination, that two of the men in the photos (below) have very similar tattoos, one reading “Only For Lady” and one reading “Nur für Damen”– we can only assume that these are instances of artistically inked homophobia, but are sincerely curious if any of our readers are tattoo anthropologists and can tell us more about these. Was this a widespread practice in the 1920s?

If you’re interested in viewing these books, or any other materials related to the history of tattoos, get in touch to make a research appointment!

From the December 1940 WQXR Program Guide:

Mr. Sanger is Executive Vice-President ol WQXR. This article is condensed from a talk he gave recently over New York’s muni­cipal station, WNYC.

We at WQXR make no systematic effort to educate our listeners to love good music. If we have succeeded in making people like it and want more of if, it is because we have not made them conscious of the fact that listen­ing to good music is necessarily educational.

Our policy at WQXR has been to avoid what has often been a stigma on radio programs: the “educational” label. We have found that, just as “good wine needs no bush,” so good music needs no label. The plan of WQXR has been to broadcast all kinds of good music…reproduced as faithfully as modern radio science makes possible, and without too much comment.

Our experience has been that, if you expose people to good music, they either like it or they don’t. Telling them it is wonderful music and is good for them is of little value in creating real music lovers. Beethoven speaks for himself in his music far better and with far more appeal than anything which might be said about him.

Children, young people, and adults who have had no previous musical experience go through an evolutionary development in their musical appreciation. In the realm of classical music they begin first to appreciate Tchaikow­sky and from there they roam quite naturally into the earlier symphonies of Beethoven, which in turn seem to condition them for Brahms and Bach.

Music is the easiest and most effective thing to present educationally on the air. And if our experience at WQXR means anything, it points to the fact that good music does an educational job in itself. Everybody cannot be made to enjoy and appreciate good music, but there is a very large part of the radio audience which can. The best way to educate those people musically is to let them listen to music. They will enjoy it and be mentally stim­ulated by it. As for the others, there is very little one can do, because they will not like music just because they are told it is good for them.

On November 1st WQXR put on the air its new 5,000-watt transmitter, which increases its power five-fold and practically doubles the area which it serves. We shall soon know whether our programs have as much appeal in more sparsely settled territory as they have in the metropolitan area. As we reach out into less cosmopolitan districts, we shall find out whether that ground is as fertile for the growth of a love of music as is New York.

It has been said that the American public is not so receptive to classical music as the European public. I doubt it. I believe the good taste of the American public is very much underestimated. The broadcasting of such fine musical programs as the opera, the Philharmonic, and the Toscanini concerts have done much to increase love of great music throughout the country. People who used to shudder at the very thought of listening to a Brahms symphony know now that Toscanini, in his great concerts, gives them something which they cannot get from the usual run of radio programs. That does not apply to all people. But I believe that a surprisingly large part of the American public, because it has been increasingly exposed to good music, is becoming more appreciative of the masters.

Great music differs from inferior music in that it wears well. Once you like it, you cannot listen to it too often. I don’t believe anyone ever complained about hearing the Beethoven Eroica Symphony too many times. The great educational value in broadcasting the best in music is that each time a person hears a composition he gets a different impression from it, hears new things in it, and goes through a spontaneous musical education. If listening to great music impels him to look into the stories behind the music and the composers, so much the better. Some people will react in that way; others will be content with the music alone.

In other words, music is, in itself, the end to be achieved. I believe that one cannot place too much emphasis upon the importance of music in our lives. The works of the masters can well become an increas­ingly strong bond among all the elements in American life. Good music is so universal in its appeal that a love for it binds together many divergent elements in our population. If there is anything in our culture which is international, and which can break down nationalistic barriers, it is surely great music. When people listen to a masterpiece, they do not consider whether the composer is English, French, German, Russian or Scandinavian.

There is no question that radio has done much to pro­mote American culture and to emphasize the American way of life. Particularly in the realm of music, the radio has performed and will continue to perform increasingly greater service in emphasizing the best in our cultural heritage.

From the August 1940 WQXR Program Guide:

Wallace Brockway and Herbert Weinstock are the authors of the best-selling book of critical biographies, “Men of Music”. They are at work on a history of the opera, to be published in 1941.

The music of lesser composers is starred with happy inspirations. Grieg and MacDowell, for instance, are sometimes so fertile in those points of departure which seem made to order for starting a masterpiece on its way, getting it over a difficult moment, or bringing it happily home, that we are momentarily seduced into believing that what we are hearing is a masterpiece. Young listen­ers of whatever age hear only these strokes of genius, and forget, or are deaf to, the acres of marking time between. An astute music merchant like Saint-Saens bunches his effects because he has to, and because he knows his own poverty. They are very impressive effects — while they last. Paging through the yellowing scores of George Philipp Telemann, Weber, Meyerbeer, and H. T. Parker — a hundred other names would serve as well — we come across a lush melody, a haunting har­monic progression, a canny rhythmic effect. Our first impulse is to disinter these giants and animate their life­less limbs — an expensive job, whether at the Philhar­monic or the Met. And we have our little triumphs: there are our effects, sure enough, but buried, sometimes lost, in a skeleton that will not take on flesh. Or, if it does for a time seem to live, it is only to collapse, fearfully and without warning, like Poe’s M. Vladimir. Not even the interpretive skill of a Toscanini or a Gieseking can avert this nauseous catastrophe and give to the disinterred second-rate the vitality of great music. Romantics would have us believe that this vitality is merely the translation into musical sounds of noble thoughts and powerful emo­tions.

This would be an eloquent argument if it could be shown that the great masters had a corner on the noble thoughts and powerful emotions of their times. Actually, some extraordinarily feeble talents wallowed in the most virtuous thinking and indulged emotions that bordered on hysteria. Contrarily, a veritable first-rank genius like Handel seems to have had no personal emotion other than generous anger, while Chopin suffered from a posi­tive dearth of noble thoughts. There really is not, and never was, a rule about such matters as these. And, in­deed, if music were a faithful translation of a composer’s personality, emotionally and mentally, listening to Haydn would be very dull and listening to Wagner an unendur­able torture. Fortunately, the small portion of the per­sonality that manages to pass through the filter of the creative imagination acts as nothing more than a coloring matter on the final product.

No. It is no less true of music than of any other art that what gives vitality is the artist’s ability to think in terms of his art and his compulsion to work unceasingly, earnestly, with the tools of his craft. He must understand the larger architecture of his forms (whether as restricted as a Schubert song or as expanded as a Beethoven sym­phony), and he must understand not only the multifarious grammar of detail, but also the function of detail in cre­ating pattern. That certain spiritual qualities Eire called into service by these processes, it would be idle to deny. But let us not try to make rules about them any more than about the ratio of noble thoughts and powerful emotions to musical vitality: they vary from composer to com­poser. Granted the original “inspiration” (which a Grieg or a Massenet, or a Moszkowski is as likely to get as a Beethoven), vitality then depends on what is done with it. Its exact character and potentialities must be understood above all, at this point, its innate vitality must not be overestimated.

It must be used in the right milieu, given to the right instruments, placed in the right keys, varied or mated with its legitimate complements. In his judicious handling of these various elements of musical creation, Beethoven is the mighty exemplar that leaps at once to mind. To follow one of those frequently rather common­place germs of musical thought from its birthplace in his notebooks to its final series of grand progressions in a symphony, concerto, quartet, or sonata, is to spy upon the central secret of artistic creation itself, and to under­stand, in a measure, why some music is vital and other music is not.

From the July 1940 WQXR Program Guide:

Dr. Irwin Edman is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia Uni­versity and is known throughout the country as the author of many important books, the most recent being “Philosopher’s Holiday” and “Candie in the Dark”.

There is an unformed and invisible society that would, if it were organized, consist of the Friends of WQXR. They do not all know each other, but they have a com­mon passion, music. They respect WQXR because it has nourished their understanding of that art through making possible their daily experience of it. In those ages where the arts have flourished, they have been part of the actual lives of men and women, not the playthings of dilettantes or snobs. A Greek vase we now look at in a museum was once used by living people in their daily pleasures and their daily tasks. Men built cathedrals to pray in, painted pictures to decorate and ennoble the houses in which men and women lived. In simple societies people cele­brated their feelings toward life and toward each other in poetry and told each other stories, or made and lis­tened to songs.

The great virtue of a radio station like WQXR — and there are very few stations like it — is that once more it has brought music into the daily lives of its listeners, of men and women who are not professional musicians.

It is something, it is a very great deal, to be able to tune in at breakfast time to Mozart, to listen to Beethoven after dinner, to retrace the movements of a beloved con­certo before bedtime, to familiarize one’s self with mod­em music on a Sunday evening, or with an opera rarely heard, on Sunday afternoon. It is a great deal to know that unfailingly, when the mood calls or the leisure per­mits, music is there to be listened to. But why is it that music does so much and something so distinctive for the layman?

One of the boons that music provides to the listener is a negative one. It is an escape from words. We use and hear so many words that say so little, and often with our very best efforts to speak precisely and contagiously, what we succeed in saying is only vague and dead. We turn from the contemporary horror and brutality and chaos of the world, about which men have said every­thing (and have said, really, nothing) to that fusion of overheard vitality and order which is music.

But music is more than an escape from words and from life. It is an escape into life, into the life of music. People who are just beginning to listen to music often think of it as a kind of soothing vagueness, “just music.” As one learns to listen, it comes to sound more precise and more intense than anything words can say, more ordered than anything we meet in the disorders of the present time, or of any time. In a world where everything seems to come out desperately wrong, good music comes out exquisitely right. It is the logic of sound. But the logic is not that of a textbook or an argument. It is an order of vitality, a rich dream of sound become organized and crystallized.

In listening to music, for the time of the listening, our own life becomes identified with the flowing life of the composition itself. We seem not only to be listening, but, with the tenderness of strings or the decisiveness of brass, ourselves to be speaking. It is as if space and things had become momentarily abolished, and the world had become a living meditation in pure tone, and the meditation our own. We hear thought in sound, where the only conflicts are those posed and revolved by the composer, through whose genius we ourselves seem to be at peace. Music thereby provides us an escape from the worrisome, the trivial, the brutal, and the urgent.

But it is also an education in an order, pure and clear, which comes to be a standard of what life itself might be. But music is not a soliloquy. It is an intense and uni­versal experience, and one deeply shared. One feels, even listening alone, that one is sharing depths of feel­ing and insight with all those others who are listening too. The Friends of WQXR are part of a great society, for they are sharing, unknown to each other, the com­panionship of the heroic poets of sound. We turn a dial to participate in the same divinities.

From the September 1940 WQXR Program Guide:

Dr. Durant, known to all as the author of “The Story of Phi­losophy,” and the recent best-seller, “The Life of Greece,” gives his reactions to music in the following brief “confessions.”

I am grateful to WQXR because it enables me to enjoy my reactionary taste in music. Occasionally it turns on, out of courtesy to my children, some modernistic explosion, but then I pay no attention to it. It is like a magnificent concert from which one may escape, and to which one may return, as the program proceeds, without occasioning any social disturbance, or betraying one’s age.

I feel my age more in music than in anything else except my joints. I have long since ceased to tune in on any station but WQXR, for even the Philharmonic broadcasts may go modern on me at any moment.

My children assure me that this allergy to con­temporary compositions has characterized old fogies in every generation; and I know just enough history to acknowledge that they are right. Bach was in disfavor for the unheard-of complexity of his masses and chorales; Beethoven was de­nounced as a revolutionist in music; only a deaf man, some critics felt, could tolerate the Ninth Symphony, or the later quartets. To make matters worse, I agree with those critics; even in 1820 I would have been behind the times. Worst of all, I like some of Stokowski’s orchestrations of Bach more than I like the original compositions. I am the last man in America who should be asked to write anything about music.

In my calmer moments I realize that any living art must make experiments. It cannot forever be putting new wine into old bottles, new themes into old sonata forms; painters can’t go on endlessly painting like Raphael, or even like Cezanne, and composers must get beyond B in their doxology. So I like the work of Vaughan Williams, and some­thing of Stravinsky and Shostakovich. But I check off for especial attention, on my WQXR programs, every bit of Handel, Vivaldi, Bach and Mozart that I can find. I know that their music will be healthy, that it won’t disturb my scholastic peace with revolutionary etudes, that it will be pure music, not sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, but happy in the joy of flowing, leaping, sound. I should have been buried long ago.

So I honor WQXR. It does not give in to my prejudices, but it provides me with such a feast of the music I like that I have always asked myself, How can I express my appreciation? It is incred­ible that by the turn of my finger I can draw out of the wall, through this station’s benevolence, such music as makes me wonder how Pythagoras could have been guilty of so inverted a statement as that “Philosophy is the highest music.” Where philoso­phy and poetry end, music begins.

The number of tributes to Jerry Herman, who died last week at the age of 88, is already sizable and continues to grow. And understandably so: the late composer-lyricist created more than a dozen memorable Broadway and film scores, including the enduring favorites Hello, Dolly! and La Cage aux Folles. Herman had also been the recipient of some of the performing arts world’s most sought-after prizes, including multiple Tony Awards, Grammy Awards and, in 2010, a Kennedy Center Honor.

While the homages to Herman’s life and artistic contributions are certainly in order, none are a substitute for the kind of appreciation which one derives from experiencing his work directly. With that in mind, the New York Public Radio Archive has the privilege of providing an opportunity for just such an experience with a recording from its collection.

On October 12, 1989, Jerry Herman was a guest on WQXR’s The Listening Room with Robert Sherman.  Broadcast live before a studio audience, host Robert Sherman welcomed Mr. Herman, along with the singers Lee Roy Reams and Florence Lacey, for an hour of performances, interviews, and reminiscences of his career.  

One of the highlights of this archival recording is Lacey’s affecting rendition of If He Walked Into My Life, accompanied by Herman himself at the piano; that performance is available in the media player at the top of this page.  Taken from Act II of Herman’s hit score Mame, the song is a portrait of the play’s protagonist, caught in the grip of profound doubt and the haunting realization that she has failed as the guardian of her deceased brother’s son. 

Did he need a stronger hand? Did he need a lighter touch? Was I soft or was I tough? Did I give enough? Did I give too much? At the moment that he needed me, did I ever turn away? Would I be there when he called, if he walked into my life today?

The complete October 12, 1989 episode of The Listening Room with Robert Sherman, which is part of the permanent collection of the New York Public Radio Archive, is available here.  Jerry Herman appears in the second half of the program, at approximately 56:00.

Bobby pins.
(WNYC Archive Collections)

In April 1943, at the height of rationing and scrap metal drives during World War II, WNYC was suddenly overwhelmed with bobby pins. Envelopes with pins poured into the station after a ballerina mentioned to the interviewer she was having difficulty getting ahold of them. Nights at the Ballet host Ted Cott suggested that listeners help out Met Opera Ballet dancer Nora Kaye by sending her one or two of the then scarce hair clips. The ballerina promised extra pins would be given to the salvage drive. The final pin count was reportedly 1,079. It just shows you that even in tough times, WNYC listeners want their dancers to look good. 

Nora Kaye (1920-1987) was born in New York City, where she studied with Michel Fokine and, under her family name, Nora Koreff, was an original member of the American Ballet in 1935-1937. She also appeared with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. Kay was a versatile dancer, had a reliable technique and great emotional power. With her portrayal of Hagar in Pillar of Fire, she assumed the place of a top-ranking dancer. Kaye was seen in the 1952 production of Two’s Company, a revue starring Bette Davis. She also worked as an assistant on the musicals I Can Get It for You Wholesale and Tovarich in 1962 and 1963 respectively, as well as an On a Clear Day You Can See Forever in 1965.

One of the great things about growing up the libraries of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was getting to work with retired faculty. No one ever seemed to really retire at MIT! Most retained their office or lab space, continued their research, and still used the libraries. 

One of my favorites was Harold “Doc” Edgerton, professor of electrical engineering. Doc, also known as Papa Flash, transformed the stroboscope into a tool for sonar and deep-sea photography. Jacques Cousteau used his equipment in shipwreck and Loch Ness monster searches. Like many MIT faculty, Doc was a student there, getting an advanced degree in 1931 and never left.

His high-speed photography also became a new art form and his short film on stroboscopic photography won an Oscar in 1940.

Stopping Time: The Photographs of Harold Edgerton. Le Temps Arrete: Les Photographies De Harold Edgerton. An Exhibition Organized From The Permanent Collection. International Center of Photography, New York City for the Arts America Program of the United States Information Agency. National Archives Identifier 88693888

I would frequently see Doc in the library or crossing campus. Always a smile and greeting and if you provided any kind of service for him, he would reach into his jacket pocket and extract one of his milk drop postcards as a thank you.

I remember the afternoon in January 1990 when word reached me that Doc had died suddenly at lunch at the MIT Faculty Club. It was like a member of the family passing on. And Doc was an important member of the MIT family.

To this day, I try to follow Doc’s philosophy:

“Work hard.  Tell everyone everything you know.  Close a deal with a handshake.  Have fun!”

As the year draws to a close it’s time for our annual end of year review. We’ve reviewed our user statistics recording visits to our archives reading room and enquiries received about our holdings to put together a list of our most popular collections in 2019.

For the second year running our most used and enquired about collection is the NHS Forth Valley Archive. It deserves the title of our most popular collection, featuring in the top three most used list in every year since its original transfer to the university in 2012. The collection documents the care and treatment of patients across the Forth Valley area over the past 150 years. The historical records of hospitals including the old Stirling District Asylum and the Royal Scottish National Hospital provide a rich research resource for academics, students and members of the public tracing their family histories. Our NHS collections contain a variety of material beyond the core holdings of historical patient records covering subjects such as nursing education, fundraising and even baking, with staff from the university library taking on the challenge of recreating recipes included in The Grangemouth Cookery Book, produced in 1925 to raise funds for the new Falkirk Infirmary.

The university’s own archives continue to be a well-used resource taking second place in our end of year list. The year started with the exciting discovery of a time capsule from 1969 which was unearthed during the redevelopment of the university’s sports facilities. 2019 marked the 50^th anniversary of Brig the university’s student newspaper and the University Archives received support from the Stirling Fund to digitise its first twenty-five years. With the support of a team of student volunteers the papers have now been sorted, catalogued and digitised and will be added to our new Culture on Campus webpages early in the new year.

Our current focus on developing and expanding our sporting heritage collections is reflected in the third place on our list going to the Commonwealth Games Scotland Archive. In January Team Scotland launched the ‘Celebrating the past, building the future’ theme for 2019-20. This focus on the history and heritage of Scottish Commonwealth sport has resulted in a marked increase in the use of the collection, a highlight being our red carpet display at the 2019 Team Scotland Awards in Edinburgh in October.

This year also saw a number of projects which have greatly improved the understanding of, and access to our collections. With the support of the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities postgraduate students at Stirling and St Andrews created new online resources focusing on our Peter Mackay and John Grierson archives (a big thank you to Janine and Isabel for their fantastic work). Further digitisation of our holdings was also made possible through our Musicians’ Union Archives Trainee programme with this year’s trainee Lorna digitising over thirty years of the union’s Musician magazine, which will also be made freely available on our new website in the new year. 

Number of Record Group descriptions in the National Archives’ Catalog: 569*
Number of Collection descriptions in the Catalog: 4,752
Number of creating organization authority files in the Catalog: 100,714 
Number of person name authority files linked to descriptions: 23,709
Number of geographic authority files linked to descriptions: 9,574
Number of topical subject files linked to descriptions: 6,960
Number of series descriptions: 265,940
Number of file descriptions: 19,522,800
Number of digital copies attached to file descriptions: 92,982,448
Number of item descriptions: 3,941,369
Number of digital copies attached to item descriptions: 8,087,738
Number of National Archives staff who have contributed to the Catalog: 898
Average number of monthly views of NARA’s records in the Catalog: 439,867
Number of other digital platforms that provide access to NARA records: 26**
Number of NARA’s digital copies available via DPLA: 93,158,351
Average number of monthly views of NARA’s records in DPLA: 22,320
Number of NARA records available in Wikipedia articles (English): 17,785
Number of NARA records in Wikimedia Commons: 463,376
Number of NARA descriptive records in Wikidata: 403,340
Average number of monthly views of NARA’s records in Wikipedia: 128,130,774
Number of NARA digital copies available through GIPHY: 400
Number of NARA staff who have contributed to our GIPHY work: 7
Average number of monthly views of NARA’s records via GIPHY: 36,441,793

*Record Group numbers currently run through 601, but not all numbers are in use.

**Platforms such as DPLA, Wikipedia, SNAC, and others of which we are aware (not including our extensive social media channels). 

Today’s blog post is an update from our 2020 Creative Fellow, Kelly Eriksen, who’s been making a deep dive into our Special Collections and planning out a sound installation for the spring.

“Last week I got to go on a really exciting hard hat tour of the Providence Public Library renovations.”

“The tour was a great opportunity to move through the old/new space and to gain an understanding of how the public will eventually use it.”

“Starting to get clearer and clearer ideas for installation. More details to come!”

“Big thanks to Aaron Peterman for giving a great tour and answering all of my (so many) questions!”

Thanks, Kelly! Stay tuned to see what she’s up to in the new year!

It’s never a dull moment around here! Our new carpet has been delayed but that means we’ll be open our normal operating hours much sooner!

We’ll still be closed for the FSU Winter Holiday Break from December 23-January 1. We will resume normal operating hours on Thursday, January 2, 2020.

You are welcome to email us at lib-specialcollections@fsu.edu while we are closed and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible in the new year.

We wish you a safe and happy holiday season!

I’m emotionally exhausted.  Probably you are too.  In particular, the news overwhelms me.  I absorb it all day.  There’s so much of it, and “good news is no news,” so there’s “a lot of awful” to go around.  It makes me blue.
 
When I want to remind myself that there’s more to “news” than U.S. news (our navel-gazing national programs barely acknowledge it), I turn to Euronews.  One of their regular segments is titled “No Comment,” in which they show a video with no sound other than what might be part of the event shown in the video — no reporter or host interprets what you’re seeing.  The viewer makes of it what they will. It can be oddly peaceful.
 
I was reminded of that segment when I found an album of cyanotypes on a shelf in our department.  It was lying on top of a collection that (as far as I can tell) had nothing at all to do with it.  I suspect it was inadvertently put there while someone was shelving something else.  The album itself has no clues to the collection it belongs to or what it is — who put it together, who the photographer is, or how it came to be here.  It has no comment about itself.
 
I also haven’t found the album digitized anywhere (yet), but the closest thing to it might be the cyanotypes of wrestlers by Eadweard Muybridge. Muybridge was a photographer who was interested in (among other things) capturing separate instances of motion.  He made several studies of motion, including one of wrestlers.  Muybridge’s wrestlers, though, are nude and ours are clothed, as I suspect Amherst College administrators would’ve preferred back when these cyanotypes were made.  Our cyanotypes have numbers in the original image (suggesting a set of commercial photographs) as well as different numbers penciled in later by someone — maybe Doc Hitchcock? — who rearranged the order of the originals, probably to use it as a teaching tool.
 
The album has a patent date, “Pat Apr 4 82,” printed in the gutter of some of the pages, so that gives us an approximate date (after April 1882) for the album.  Otherwise, the album remains a mystery.  It’s likely that one of my colleagues has seen it and knows something about it, but I haven’t asked anyone yet — it would  break the spell.
 
So I looked at it without any information about its provenance or intended use.  I looked at it just as it is, and sank into the blue — like the blue of a quiet, late afternoon snow.
 
No further comment.

Happy Holidays and all that from the
Archives! Also, a reminder that the Archives will be closed from noon on
December 24, 2019, until 9am on January 2, 2020, for the holiday season.

This year’s season’s greeting comes from
the Jack Boothe
fonds. We thought Jack Boothe’s fun holiday card wishing the recipient
“Greetings from the moon” was an appropriate card to pay homage to the moon
landing of 50 years ago. Although the exact year this card was drawn for is
unclear, we can surmise from some of its clues that it was for a Christmas
sometime between 1969, when the Jack and his second wife Aileen (née Brownrigg)
moved to West Vancouver (note the Duchess Avenue address), and 1972, the last
Christmas before Boothe’s death, which occurred in August 1973.

Jack Boothe was a cartoonist and writer, who worked for The Vancouver Daily Province, as well as other Canadian newspapers throughout his career. He was born John William Douglas Boothe on August 20, 1910, in Winnipeg to Mabel and J. Howard Boothe, but grew up in Vancouver, where he graduated high school. He received his formal art training at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts before he began his work with The Vancouver Daily Province in 1930.

He was well-loved for his political cartoons.
An article that ran in The Vancouver
Daily Province on January 23, 1943, describing an exhibition of his work sums
up his beloved style: “with decisive and expressive draftsmanship the cartoons…reveal
an astonishing fertility of imagination. Satire is blended effectively with
humor in a manner which arouses both mirth and reflection.”

The Jack Boothe fonds
includes more custom Christmas
cards, many cartoons,
original artwork, correspondence, newspaper
clippings, published works, and other records created or received by Jack
Boothe in relation to his work as a cartoonist.

Some of the Special Collections & Archives space will be under construction starting on Monday, December 16th (we’re getting new carpet!). Because of the need to move furniture and materials for this work, the Special Collections Research Center Reading Room, Exhibit Room, and the Norwood Reading Room in Strozier Library will be closed starting on Monday, December 16. We will resume our normal operating hours on Monday, January 13, 2020.

The Pepper Library and Museum will be closed for the FSU Winter Break from Monday, December 23 until Monday, January 6, 2020.

During these times, you can still search our collections in our finding aid database, the library catalog and access digitized materials in DigiNole: FSU’s digital repository. If you have any questions, you can contact the division through email.

We here in Special Collections & Archives wish everyone a safe and wonderful holiday season!

Since the Innovation Hub opened in July 2015, many visitors and volunteers have passed through its doors to scan documents from our holdings, attend presentations and conferences, and participate in brainstorming sessions as well as scanathons and editathons.

The Innovation Hub accomplishes an important part of NARA’s mission to make access happen through digitization, and also serves as an important event space to bring together both internal and external stakeholders for collaborative activities and cooperative learning. In 2019, the Innovation Hub hosted more than 130 events with a total in-person attendance of 2,331. 

Recently, we welcomed two student groups to the Innovation Hub who were interested in learning more about the work of the National Archives, how to conduct research, and ways to participate in scanning documents to make them more accessible online. 

Students in Brian Heintz’s Applied History class from West Springfield High School spend the school year learning about and visiting various institutions that interpret and present history. The information they learn during their visits prepares them for future internships at various institutions. During their visit to the National Archives Innovation Hub, their goals were to visit the museum side of the Archives, learn about conducting research, and scan original documents to learn about hands-on work that we do to make our records available online. During their visit, they scanned 1,627 pages of Compiled Military Service Records! These records will be available online in the National Archives Catalog in just a few weeks.

Additionally, the University of Maryland’s Student Archivists of Maryland, an organization of graduate students studying archival science, visited the Innovation Hub to learn more about our process for metadata collection and uploading digital files to the Catalog, while participating in a hands-on scanning event. Together they scanned 6 pension files of Buffalo Soldiers and Indian Scouts. One student even found a photo within the file! 

I am proud to welcome these groups through our doors to share the important work being accomplished at the National Archives, and for the opportunity it affords to participate in conversations emphasizing the relevance of history and the historical record. Together we are raising awareness of the value of archives and archivists, and pursuing a path to elevate history to a greater role in our community and our nation.

Learn more about the Innovation Hub on our website. 

It’s the birthday of Mario Braggiotti, the late pianist, composer and host of WQXR’s To France—With Music. The New York Public Radio Archive is celebrating the occasion with a recently acquired broadcast recording of Mr. Braggiotti on WQXR’s The Listening Room. In this appearance, we experience Braggiotti as a beguiling pianist-raconteur, taking WQXR listeners on a musical trip through his fascinating life in 1920s Paris and beyond.  The complete September 5th, 1990 interview and performance is available in the media player at the top of this page.

                                                    *       *       *

Mario Braggiotti was born in Florence on November 29, 1905 to an Italian father and an American mother, both of whom were trained singers of opera and lieder.  The Braggiotti family moved to Boston in 1919, but by 1922 the 17 year-old Mario was back in Europe studying music in France, both at the Paris Conservatory and at the Fontainebleau School with Nadia Boulanger and Isidor Philipp.  It was while at the Paris Conservatory that he met fellow student Jacques Fray, with whom he formed the piano-duo Fray and Braggiotti.  The duo’s popularity grew quickly as they performed in the cafes and salons of Paris, and soon they found themselves touring Europe and embarking on a celebrated international career.

In 1928, Braggiotti befriended the composer George Gershwin, who was in France at the time developing ideas for his iconic work for orchestra An American in Paris.  Gershwin was taken with Fray and Braggiotti’s musical abilities and quickly cast them in the London production of his show Funny Face, starring Adele and Fred Astaire.

Advertisement; New York Daily News; 26 March 1931
(WQXR Archive Collections)

In 1929, after their run in London, Fray and Braggiotti arrived in the United States.  The following decade was filled with performances in some of the country’s premier venues —including a 1931 sold-out show at Carnegie Hall as part of an evening of French music with Maurice Chevalier.  The duo also made about 1,500 radio appearances, including regular spots on the popular CBS program The Kraft Music Hall. 

When the United States entered into World War II in 1941, the Fray and Braggiotti duo disbanded, ending their 19-year collaboration.  Mario Braggiotti enlisted in the United States Army and was assigned to the Office of War Information, working there as a radio broadcaster in Europe.

When the war ended, Braggiotti returned to the United States and resumed his musical career, but now as a soloist and as the star of his own one-man show. He also continued his work as a composer; adding to the two hundred-plus transcriptions for piano duo that he developed with Jacques Fray, he composed new scores for ballet, musical theater, solo piano, and commercials.

Print ad; February 1964
(WQXR Archive Collections)

In 1963, WQXR invited Mr. Braggiotti to take over as host of its program To France—With Music.  The show’s previous host for thirteen years was Braggioti’s former duo partner, Jacques Fray, who had died unexpectedly at the age of 59 in January of that year. Mario Braggiotti accepted, and his first broadcast as a WQXR host was on February 5th, 1963.  He filled his twice-weekly programs with recordings of the music of France and tales of his experiences there with his fascinating circle of friends —among them Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel, Manuel de Falla, and Vincent d’Indy.

Braggiotti spent the last chapter of his life performing, composing and spending time at his homes in Tuscany and West Palm Beach, Florida. Mario Braggiotti died on May 18, 1996 at the age of 90.

In response to those of you afflicted with historic thematic earworms and the crushing desire to identify them: The above themes are from the February 1962 WQXR Program Guide, below, from the February 1952 guide. We hope these lists will help.

WQXR show themes from the February 1952 WQXR Program Guide.
(WQXR Archive Collections)

In May, I started an internship at the City of Vancouver Archives with the goal of supporting community outreach and engagement with the BC Gay and Lesbian Archives (BCGLA). This opportunity was provided through UBC’s Public History Initiative, which gives UBC students like myself an opportunity to apply academic skills outside the classroom and expand community engagement with history. Being both a history student and a member of the LGBTQ2+ community meant that this position held particular importance for me, and I had a passionate interest in increasing the visibility and public use of these holdings. 

In the past six months working here at the City Archives, planning Pride events and other opportunities for public involvement, I have gained a new perspective on the depth of LGBTQ2+ histories in Vancouver and the importance of “queering” the archives. The Archives has acquired LGBTQ2+ holdings over the past 25 years with Ron Dutton’s BCGLA collection being the most recent acquisition in 2018. The LGBTQ2+ community has often had their history silenced in favour of a heteronormative narrative, but this collection of thousands of photos, textual materials, and hours of media footage ensures that the LGBTQ2+ history of BC is not overlooked. The BCGLA has emerged directly out of the community, representing a collection of stories that were often held in shoe boxes under beds and eventually made their way into an archival collection. These archives capture the existence of identity, community, and resistance, moving away from mainstream narratives and embodying the uniqueness of LGBTQ2+ experiences and histories here in BC. In their new home in the City Archives, these stories have been preserved and digitized to ensure that those in search of LGBTQ2+ history and community are able to find them. 

Institutions like archives and museums have a particular responsibility in preserving historical materials and ensuring their public accessibility for research and personal interests. The LGBTQ2+ community has been a prominent part of British Columbia’s history, but has not always been a prominent part of institutional collections. Certain histories and narratives have been unfortunately left out or overlooked due to past biases or a lack of recorded material. This is where archives like the BCGLA come in. Ron Dutton’s collection of materials, and its continued preservation and digitization by the City Archives, emphasizes the persistence and presence of LGBTQ2+ history in BC. By acquiring, preserving, and making accessible the histories of members of the LGBTQ2+ community, the City Archives ensures that queer history is visible within the historical record. Especially with its recent focus on community outreach, it is working to create a space in which LGBTQ2+ histories can be shared, heard, and prioritized.

In recent years, there has been an increased call for the “queering” of society, culture, and history. Queering, a shortened term for “queer reading”, advocates for a re-reading of the past and present to identify and subvert heteronormativity, while also elevating the presence of historically marginalized sexualities and gender identities. The BCGLA plays an important role in challenging the hetero and cisnormative narratives (the “straightwashing”) of BC’s past. Indeed, rather than telling a singular queer history, sources in the collection attend to the histories of multiple communities and individuals, offering a look into BC’s queer history well beyond what we are used to seeing. Ron’s collection of photographs touches on everything from softball teams, theatre productions, international women’s day, kink events, gender nonconformity, the trans community, anti-racist protests, Greater Vancouver Native Cultural Society events, coronation balls, documentaries on Vancouver’s sex workers – and the list does not end here. The BCGLA ultimately acts in direct defiance of those who have tried to silence LGBTQ2+ presence and history, and establishes queer communities within their rightful place in the broader history of Vancouver and beyond. 

The past six months have been a fantastic opportunity to take part in a queering of the City Archives as we took part in several events and hosted one of our own. Thanks to the invaluable support from the Vancouver Pride Society, we were able to attend East Side Pride, the Pride Proclamation ceremony at City Hall, and the Sunset Beach Festival. As well, thanks to the hospitality of the Queer Arts Festival, we were present at Stonewall 50: Glitter is Forever. On October 26, we held a photo identification event, hosted in partnership with the SUM Gallery and the folks at Queer Art Fest. At each of these events, we shared information and sources from our LGBTQ2+ collections, listened to community members’ stories, and asked for their help in identifying people in photographs. Recently, we have also implemented a new online photo identification tool for any members of the public who wish to comment on the photos within the BCGLA collection. 

In my time working with the City Archives, from the early Pride planning to putting together the event at the SUM, I was able to learn more about what work is being done here and why archives like the BCGLA are so important. What started out as a project to increase public awareness of the BCGLA and engagement with the materials developed, at least for me, into a multifaceted project to ensure that these archives are as recognized and utilized as others in the City Archives. Engaging communities whose histories are represented within the City Archives is an important process, and I am incredibly grateful to have been a part of this work. 

Around thirteen miles North from downtown Tallahassee is Lake Iamonia. Families such as the Van Brunts historically developed the land around Iamonia as large cotton plantations. R.F. Van Brunt was born in 1862 and from 1902 to 1911 operated a general store and the Van Brunt plantation in the area. The collection primarily comprises store account ledgers like the 1911 Day Book on the left.

At first glance these financial ledgers may not contain anything other than store balances and goods sold. However, this collection sheds light on local sharecropping. Sharecropping was an agricultural labor system that replaced slavery following the end of the Civil War. Plantation owners used this system to keep many former enslaved people bound to their plantations to maintain their crop-driven businesses. 

Sharecropping contracts, like the one below found in one of the Van Brunt store ledgers contracting Randall Hayes, leased land to the sharecropper to cultivate a cash crop. At a specified date, the sharecropper had to produce the contracted quantity of which they kept a portion.

The Van Brunt store ledgers help us understand the economics of sharecropping. The country store in Iamonia is one example of how credit networks drove sharecropping. At the beginning of the agricultural year, sharecroppers bought their seeds and supplies on credit. The store often supplied individuals for months at a time without receiving payment. Near the date on their contracts, sharecroppers paid their store account in several ways.

The entry for September 16th affirms that five individuals received a balance on their store account for labor “by hauling seed.”

Click to view slideshow.

While they could pay cash if they had it, sharecroppers paid their store balance down with agricultural goods as well. The entry from October 6th reveals that customers paid their store accounts down “by cotton.” Because they paid rent on farmland, and sometimes store balances, in cotton, local sharecroppers often settled their debt with the plantation owner and store during the harvest season.

Infrequent opportunities to settle accounts with plantation owners, natural disruptions, and crop failures meant that sharecropping easily became a cycle of debt that trapped African Americans on the same plantations that enslaved them or their parents.

We invite members of the FSU community and the general public to access our collections in our reading room on the first floor of Strozier Library Monday-Thursday from 10:00-6:00 and Friday from 10:00-5:30.

The 1911 Day Book and Sharecropping Contracts are also available for viewing in our digital library, DigiNole.

Click here to learn more about the Van Brunt Business Records.

Further Reading:

Paisley, Clifton. “Van Brunt’s Store, Iamonia, Florida, 1902-1911.” Florida Historical Quarterly 48 (1970): 353-367.

November 20 of this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Native takeover and occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Native activists took advantage of a clause in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie that all retired, abandoned or out-of-use federal land should be returned to the Native people who once occupied it. Alcatraz closed as a federal prison in March 1963 and was abandoned by the government by 1964. On November 20, the first boat full of Native activists arrived to take possession of the island; they would remain on Alcatraz until forced out by the federal government on June 11, 1971.

The Archives & Special Collections holds a wide range of materials both from the time of the occupation and retrospectives and other later publications. A selection of these items is on display on Frost Library A-Level through the end of the semester to mark this important anniversary.

Click to view slideshow.

The history of the National Archives records our longstanding commitment to the mission of preserving and providing access to the permanent records of the federal government. However, in no decade in our history have we provided greater access than in the one that is drawing to a close this month. Together, our staff developed values to collaborate, innovate and learn. Our focus on those values has resulted in unprecedented digital access to our records.

To make digital access happen, you need digital records and we are creating them at a rate that was unthinkable just a few years ago. Thanks to new software and hardware technologies, we are able to scan, index and provide access to digital copies of our records like never before.  Our digitization partnerships have resulted in tens of millions of digital copies of our records that we are making available in our Catalog. Ten years ago, NARA had 300,000 digital copies of our records available through the Catalog. Today we have 97 million and counting.  We are working toward a goal of having 500 million digital copies available through our Catalog by FY24. After that, we are on to our first billion.

In 2009, Making Access Happen meant that we provided descriptions of our records in our online Catalog and our digital presence was limited to our websites. Today our records are available on over 25 platforms and counting.  We started working with Wikipedia in 2011 and our collaboration has ensured that digital copies of our records are viewed over a billion times each year.  Our partnership with the Digital Public Library of America has resulted in more views of our records on their site than on our own.  Our digitization partners’ websites provided over 300 million views to our records in 2019.

We have come a long way over the past ten years to expand digital access to our records. By using new technologies and developing open and collaborative relationships, we are providing digital copies of our records to people who may never come to a National Archives building, may never click on to archives.gov, but will see our records on social media, blogs, and websites from DPLA to GIPHY and more.  What a decade it has been! Just imagine what we will accomplish in the next one.

Today the news reached us in the Archives & Special Collections that Jack W. C. Hagstrom MD (AC 1955) passed away late last week. We will offer a fuller tribute to Jack’s memory in the weeks ahead, but this post from 2012 gives some sense of how much he shaped the collections at Amherst College. Without Jack and his devotion to the poetry of Robert Frost, we would not have the world-class collection we hold today. We are all richer thanks to Jack’s efforts.

He will be missed.

The Frost Collection at Amherst College grew out of donations of books, manuscripts, and other materials from a variety of sources — mostly alumni and faculty who had relationships with Robert Frost. Among these, Jack W. C. Hagstrom (AC 1955) is chiefly responsible for the outstanding collection of audio tapes of Frost’s readings.

Jack W. C. Hagstrom (AC 1955)

During his years at Amherst, Jack developed a friendship with Frost and began collecting his work in earnest. In 1959 Robert Frost sent Jack a letter empowering him to gather copies of as many recordings of Frost’s “talks and recitations” as could be had. Our files from the 1960s are filled with correspondence with Jack and others about the acquisition and delivery of many of our Frost recordings.

Robert Frost to Jack W. C. Hagstrom, October 23, 1959

In the 1980s, all of our reel-to-reel Frost recordings were transferred to cassette tapes — a total of 171 tapes that range from March 1941 to December 1962, just one month before Frost’s death. These cassettes are available for use in the Archives and are listed in the Finding Aid to the Robert Frost Collection. Currently, none of our audio recordings of Frost are available online.

Another facet to our collection is the range of materials that document Frost’s appearances on film during his lifetime. We have fewer than a dozen films, but among them is one of the most interesting documents of Frost as a performer and a persona: Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World (1963).

This documentary by filmmaker Shirley Clarke won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1963 and it captures Frost in performance near the end of his life. It includes footage of Frost speaking at Sarah Lawrence and Amherst College along with interviews and other footage of Frost.

Frost speaking with Amherst College students.

This film was recently re-released as part of the Shirley Clarke project by Milestone Films (as reported in the New York Times in April 2012). A copy of the new DVD is available for viewing in the Frost Library circulating collection and two copies of the original 16mm film released by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston are available in the Archives & Special Collections.  Beyond the finished product of Clarke’s labors, the Archives also holds complete transcripts for all of the interviews conducted with Frost for the project. One can read the full text of the interviews to discover what parts did not make the final cut of the film. These transcripts sit alongside the many folders full of transcripts of other Frost tapes, including tapes of Frost not held by the Archives.

The documentary was part of a larger marketing campaign for Holt, Rinehart, and Winston who also released a book and a record of Frost reading his poems at the same time. The book, the record, and several copies of their advertising flyer are included in the collection.

Their advertising slogan — “Frost should be read…and seen and heard as well” — is most fitting for a poet who so frequently performed his poems and whose performances provide essential insight to his work.

Special Collections & Archives wants to share some updates on our work surfacing and highlighting collections documenting local enslavement and sharecropping. Collaborating with the Tallahassee History and Human Rights Project in their creation of the Invisible Lives Tours produced a list of our archival materials that we wanted to make more visible and accessible to researchers and the general public. What followed was the creation of a research guide solely devoted to gathering our primary sources of Enslavement and Sharecropping in Florida in one place.

The guide aims to promote and support historical and genealogical research in Tallahassee and surrounding counties. In the guide you can find relevant manuscript collections, rare books, and oral histories available on-site and/or digitally. To find Special Collections research guides, navigate to the FSU Libraries home page, click on “Research Guides,” select “By Group,” and then select the drop-down menu “Special Collections.”

From that body of material, we digitized and submitted objects for inclusion in the Association of Southeast Research Libraries’ (ASERL) “Enslaved People in the Southeast” collaborative exhibit that debuted November 4th. The exhibit commemorates the 400 years that have passed since enslaved Africans were first sold in the English colonies in 1619 marking the beginning of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

FSU and thirty-five other institutions offered a range of primary sources including “photos, letters, bills of sale, emancipation documents, insurance and taxation documents, and maps indicating segregation zones.” With this breadth of archival primary sources, “Enslaved People in the Southeast” seeks to show the social complexity of enslavement and its legacy across sharecropping, Jim Crow, and segregation. 

To access our collections, we invite members of the FSU community and the general public to our reading room on the first floor of Strozier Library Monday-Thursday from 10:00-6:00 and Friday from 10:00-5:30. We also encourage those interested to browse our digital library, DigiNole.

Such names as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Paderewski, Grieg, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, and Hindemith are probably familiar to WQXR listeners. But did you know that, like WQXR, they all used advanced music-playback technologies?[i] Dear reader, read on.

It’s a short walk from WQXR’s current studios in lower Manhattan to the corner of Church and Leonard Streets. That’s where the first purpose-built opera house in the United States opened in 1833. It was created by Lorenzo Da Ponte, who also wrote the words to some of the world’s most famous operas: The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte.[ii]

The music for those three operas was written by Mozart, who also wrote music specifically for playback on automated mechanical organs. Beethoven wrote the first version of his Battle Symphony for the panharmonicon, an automated mechanical orchestra.[iii] And, long before either of those musical masters (or anyone else named in the first paragraph) was born, Handel had already been programming automated musical playback devices.[iv]

John V. L. Hogan from the 1938 Radio Annual
(WQXR Archive Collections)

As for WQXR, it was born (as W2XR) in 1929, after the inventions of the phonograph and the gramophone, which not only played music but could also record it. W2XR began as an experimental television station, and its founder, John V. L. Hogan, would sometimes play classical music records from his collection to accompany the image transmissions. 

When the Federal Radio Commission made special high-fidelity channels available, Hogan got one of the first. Unfortunately, his old music discs couldn’t offer fidelity matching the new transmissions. To remedy this, Hogan and his engineer, Al Barber, obtained special “transcription” disc recordings and played them on “extended-range” turntables, with different audio filters inserted in the circuitry to match what was being played. There was also a live piano.[v]

The piano was soon joined by more instruments and musicians playing them; for many years, WQXR had an in-house string quartet, which made recordings available to the public.[vi] The station also started “cutting” recordings on 16-inch lacquer discs.[vii] But disc recordings still left much to be desired. They had a limited capacity – not enough to capture even just the first movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 – couldn’t be edited, and were susceptible to noise and distortion caused by dirt and warping.

Today, when every smartphone can record and play music using semiconductor memories, it might be hard to imagine that sound recording was difficult in the 1930s, but it was. Semiconductor memories didn’t exist. Besides mechanical discs, the only options for audio recording seemed to be optical, as in a movie’s soundtrack, or magnetic.

The classical music for the 1940 movie Fantasia was recorded optically on film by the Philadelphia Orchestra at their home in the Academy of Music. But only a few reels at a time were permitted inside lest they burn down the building. The nitrocellulose base of the film was considered an explosive.[viii] Film also had to be developed before the sound could be played.

Magnetic recording of sound had been proposed by the 1880s and was demonstrated at the Paris World’s Fair in 1900.[ix] The original recording medium was a steel wire, which could be magnetized, demagnetized, and re-magnetized; it could also be cut and then tied, soldered, or welded together for editing. It seemed to have everything – except sound quality. It wouldn’t be until after World War II that magnetic tape recording, with its higher fidelity, would be introduced to the U.S.

Before WQXR moved to lower Manhattan, it was in midtown, and, before that, it was in Queens. Also in Queens at the time was radio engineer and inventor James Arthur Miller. Miller considered sound-recording options and came up with a unique hybrid of mechanical and optical technologies. The medium was a multilayer film that a stylus could cut into. After the cutting or carving into the opaque upper layer, the result looked like a variable-area photographic soundtrack that could be played optically. It required no chemical development, so it could be played immediately after recording. And it could be spliced for editing much the same as motion-picture film. Best of all, it had the highest sound quality of any recording medium available at the time.[x]

Detail photo of the Phillips-Miller Machine.
(Phillips Technical Review, March 1939)

Miller made a deal with the Dutch electronics manufacturer Philips to commercialize the product, and what became known variously as the Philips-Miller recording system, Philimil, Millerfilm, or Millertape was adopted by European broadcasters in the mid-1930s.[xi] In the United States, in 1938, WQXR was the first radio station to use the high-fidelity format, playing a BBC recording of Carmen.[xii]

After WQXR proved the utility and quality of the format, the Philips-Miller system seemed poised to sweep through the American broadcasting industry. NBC used it to record one of its programs, and high-power stations WOR in Newark and WTIC in Hartford installed the equipment.[xiii] By the beginning of 1940, another 13 stations of the Mutual Broadcasting System (MBS) had also adopted Millerfilm.[xiv] Even the background-music service Muzak used it, for “wide-range, high-fidelity sound [that] was superior to any on radio.”[xv]

Unfortunately, once the film was cut by a stylus, it could not be re-recorded, and Philips was the only source of uncut reels. Just months after the MBS stations installed Philimil reproducers, Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands, and the supply was cut off. In Germany, meanwhile, researchers had been working on a form of magnetic sound recording using neither wire nor steel bands but coated film or tape. Instead of the coating being an opaque layer that could be cut into, however, it was a layer of iron particles that could be magnetized. When World War II ended, magnetic tape recording technology was imported to the United States and swiftly developed to higher fidelity.[xvi] 

What about those semiconductor sound-recording memories in smartphones? When they get filled up, they’re often archived to “the cloud,” where the information is stored on the latest generation of, yes, magnetic tape.[xvii]

_______________________________________________

[i] Hope Lourie Killcoyne, editor, The History of Music, Chicago & New York: Encyclopædia Britannica & Rosen Publishing, 2016, p. 71

[ii] Joan Acocella, “The life of the man who put words to Mozart,” The New Yorker, January 8, 2007, pp. 70-76

[iii] Killcoyne

[iv] Tessa Murdoch, “Time’s Melody,” Apollo, November 2013, p. 80

[v] Bill Jaker, Frank Sulek, & Peter Kanze, The Airwaves of New York, Jefferson, NC & London: McFarland, 1998, p. 169

[vi] Andy Lanset, “The WQXR String Quartet,” October 16, 2018, < https://www.wnyc.org/story/wqxr-string-quartet/>

[vii] “Back in the Day: Artifacts through the Ages,” WQXR Features, Sep 28, 2011, <https://www.wqxr.org/story/161452-back-day/>

[viii] William E. Garrity & Watson Jones, “Experiences in Road-Showing Walt Disney’s Fantasia,” Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, v. 39 n. 7, July 1942, p. 9

[ix] David L. Morton, Jr., “The Invention of Magnetic Sound Recording,” Sound Recording: the life story of a technology, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006, pp. 50-54

[x] Russell Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business, volume 3, New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 140

[xi] Michele Hilmes, Network Nations: A Transnational History of British and American Broadcasting, New York & London: Routledge, 2012, p. 131

[xii] Jaker, et al., p. 170

[xiii] “Transcriptions,” Broadcasting, August 1, 1939, p. 53

[xiv] “Kyser MBS List,” Broadcasting, January 15, 1940, p. 24

[xv] Sanjek, p. 168

[xvi] Nick Ravo, “John Mullin, 85, Whose Magnetic Tape Freed Radio Broadcasters,” The New York Times, July 3, 1999, p. B7

[xvii] Kayle Hope, “Tape is here to rescue big data,” Quartz, February 28, 2019, <https://qz.com/1561878/google-amazon-and-microsoft-turn-to-magnetic-tape-storage-technology-to-back-up-their-clouds/>

Last spring, the National Archives Foundation Board voted to present the 2019 Records of Achievement Award to Cokie Roberts in recognition of her work as a journalist, political commentator, and historian.  With her untimely passing, last night’s award ceremony was, instead, a tribute program honoring her life and legacy.

Cokie dedicated her life to learning about and telling us the stories of women and their roles in our founding and in our government.  Her work extended far beyond the scope of well-known politicians and suffragists, often looking to ordinary women and their influence.  She did so much to highlight the contributions of other women, it was a privilege to honor Cokie for her many contributions at the National Archives. This past summer she graciously agreed to give the keynote at our annual Fourth of July celebration.  Her remarks brought attention to the forgotten women who helped contribute to independence and ultimately the right to vote.  In 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John Adams, urging him to “remember the ladies,” and Cokie was determined to remember them as well.

As a member of the National Archives Foundation Board, Cokie worked tirelessly on behalf of our education and outreach activities.  Her wise counsel, intelligence, wit, and passion for the role of women in our society will be missed—but never forgotten.

Over ten years together, Cokie and I often found ourselves in the Rotunda of the National Archives where the conversation turned to the Barry Faulkner murals depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Cokie ALWAYS bemoaned the fact that there were no women depicted.

In Cokie’s honor, last night Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, Martha Washington, and Eliza Hamilton joined the ranks through the magic of projection technology.  The National Archives Foundation commissioned Port Townsend (WA) artist Samara King to bring equality to the murals for the evening.

Cokie would have loved it!

The Talisman was a student run publication that was active at Florida State College for Women (FSCW), FSU’s predecessor institution. The magazine was published quarterly by the Thalian Literary Society and the Minerva Club, the first two literary debate societies of FSCW. The first issue was published in 1906 and it ran until 1914, when it was turned into a weekly newspaper called the Florida Flambeau. As the students put it in the first ever issue of the Florida Flambeau in January 23rd, 1915, “Things happen so rapidly that once every three months makes a slow visitor.”

The Talisman was the first college literary periodical to be published in Florida. Each issue featured student writings, editorials, campus news, and updates on all departments, including music and athletics. It included spaces for student notes and campus directories. Not only did The Talisman provide an avenue through which students could express their thoughts, it also was a way for students and surrounding communities to be informed as to the happenings of our campus.

The Talisman now exists as a time capsule for us. The writings of these students paint a picture of what student life was like in those years. We can also trace the progress and growth of our university through these publications by reading the departmental news from those early years. The Talisman can be found in DigiNole with our other publications here. If you have any questions about this collection please contact the Heritage & University Archivist, Sandra Varry, at svarry@fsu.edu.

The NHS collections here at the University of Stirling Archives are consistently in our top three most used collections every year. I think it would be fair to say that the vast majority of enquiries we receive concern family history research which is always fascinating to undertake and we often have much to contribute. However, the NHS collections contain so much more than patient records with a wealth of varied material just waiting to be discovered. So this month, as Explore Your Archive launches, we’re inviting colleagues from all across the University, and members of the public too, to explore the theme of fundraising within the NHS collections with us.

To celebrate the theme, a baker’s dozen of colleagues from across Information Services will be recreating recipes from a cook book produced in 1925 to raise money for the new Falkirk Royal Infirmary. As much as Red Monkey chutney and stewed kidneys sounded delicious, we’ve stuck to cakes this time – teas and coffees will also be available so come along and join us for a mid-morning break in S10, Lower Studies Corridor, University Library (follow the colourful archive signs at the Atrium end of the Loch Bridge!) 10:00-12:00 on Thursday 21st November.

Choosing which recipes to bake was no mean feat but we’ve ended up with some well-known classics and some 1920s surprises, with a gluten free option available too. You’ll also have the chance to vote for your favourite gingerbread and sponge sandwich recipe from the book as some of our bakers go head to head with a few of the different available variations on these classics.

On the day we’ll be taking donations for Art Link who work to bring arts, crafts and creativity to patients across NHS Forth Valley. They will be using our donation for projects with mental health patients in the region.

Hope to see you there!

You may remember our blog post from last October when we announced that the Hugh Pickett fonds was available to researchers in person at the Archives. Now, thanks to the fundraising efforts of the Friends of the Vancouver City Archives, we are happy to announce that over 700 photographs from the fonds are now digitized and available online.

Hugh Pickett was best known as ‘Vancouver’s Impresario’. Pickett began his career working as a press agent for Hilker Attractions, and eventually ended up running the company with Holly Maxwell under the name Famous Artists Ltd. from 1947 until 1964. Famous Artists was an artistic management company dedicated to sponsoring appearances by artists and ballet and theatre companies in Vancouver and Victoria, and Pickett remained at the head of the company until he sold it in the mid 1980s.

Pickett was also heavily involved with Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS) and was its manager from 1952 until 1954. Over the years, he brought hundreds of famous actors, musicians and performers to Vancouver and secured Vancouver’s spot on many international tours. He acted as the manager for Marlene Dietrich for 12 years in the 1960s and 70s, and also was a leader in the campaign to save the Orpheum Theatre in the 1970s.

Hugh Pickett’s photographs series contains photographs documenting Pickett’s life, work, and youth. Images depict various artists and celebrities, TUTS productions and personnel, social gatherings, political gatherings, Spitfire Fund events, local and international trips, and family and friends. The photographs present a rare and lighthearted look into Vancouver’s nightlife, theatre and fascination with celebrity. Please enjoy this small selection of photographs:

We’d also like to thank Ron McDougall for his help identifying people in the photographs. Ron is a long-time Famous Artists associate and friend of Pickett’s.