BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Dibner Library Exhibit: Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction, 1780-1910

DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Dibner Library Exhibit: Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction, 1780-1910:

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Description of Pictures: Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction, 1780-1910
July 1, 2015 – February 26, 2017
This exhibition explores the intersecting influences of science, innovation, industry, and the Victorian creative imagination through books from the Smithsonian Libraries and selected historical objects from Smithsonian museums.
The industrial revolution that began at the end of the 18th century paved the way for a period of dramatic change in America and Europe as advances in science, art, and industry forged a new world. This revolution was also a communications revolution: mechanized printing and book production, increased literacy, the first illustrated newspapers, and the penny post all changed the way information was consumed and shared. And the public was enthralled by the rapid invention and scientific discoveries that characterized the age. Science became spectacle, and such literary luminaries as Jules Verne, Mary Shelley, and Edgar Allan Poe responded, crafting fiction that explored the farthest reaches of the new scientific landscape and the startling possibilities this new knowledge uncovered.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SIAHFW_150827_007.JPG: Fantastic Worlds Science and Fiction, 1780-1910
2. SIAHFW_150827_014.JPG: Fantastic Worlds Science and Fiction, 1780-1910 Travel with us to the surface of the moon, the center of the earth, and the depths of the ocean -- - to the fantastic worlds of fiction inspired by 19th-century discovery and invention. New frontiers of science were emerging. We took to the air, charted remote corners of the earth, and harnessed the power of steam and electricity. We began unlocking the secrets of the natural world. The growing literate middle class gave science a new and avid public audience. Writers explored the farther reaches of the new scientific landscape to craft novels, hoaxes, and satires.
3. SIAHFW_150827_022.JPG: Samuel G. Goodrich The Balloon Travels of Robert Merry and His Young Friends over Various Countries in Europe New York, 1863 Under the name Peter Parley, Samuel Goodrich wrote popular stories of ballooning for children. Goodrich's tales combined adventure and science as a way to educate and entertain young readers.
4. SIAHFW_150827_027.JPG: Monck Mason Aeronautica; or, Sketches Illustrative of the Theory and Practice of Aerostation London, 1838 Another infamous aeronautic tale involves Monck Mason whose, at the time, record-setting trip from London to Weilburg, Germany in 1836 helped renew the public interest in ballooning. Mason was regarded as master of "aerostation", or the operation of hot-air balloons. Mason's account of the voyage in the famed Royal Nassau balloon of Vauxhall Gardens was a rousing success with the public. Mason was accompanied by Charles Green and Robert Holland on his historic flight. The voyage inspired Edgar Allan Poe to write a fake newspaper story in 1844, claiming that Mason had crossed the Atlantic in 75 hours.
5. SIAHFW_150827_030.JPG: Flights of Fancy: Age of the Aeronaut: Aeronauts were the first voyagers and navigators of flight. The history of flight began when the Montgolfier brothers launched the first balloon in 1783. Ballooning made celebrities of aeronauts, whose adventures filled newspapers, sold books, and inspired works of fiction. Flight offered a sense of freedom and a radical new frontier for exploration. Flights of fancy did not stop with ballooning, as inventors, engineers, and scientists devised navigable airships and early planes. The search for new modes of flight continues to propel science and the imagination today.
6. SIAHFW_150827_034.JPG: The Transient Lake; or Frank Reade, Jr.'s Adventures in a Mysterious Land (Frank Reade Weekly Magazine) New York, 1904 Frank Reade was an extremely popular series of dime novels, starring Reade as a brilliant inventor. Reade traveled the world in fantastic flying machines searching for treasure. His wild adventures captured public attention when practical flight seemed possible and imminent.
7. SIAHFW_150827_038.JPG: Rudyard Kipling With the Night Mail, a Story of 2000 AD New York, 1909 Rudyard Kipling imagined life in the year 2000, when airships would travel the world powered by a device called Fleury's Ray. Flight was so commonplace in this future world that families would place ads for personal pilots.
8. SIAHFW_150827_044.JPG: H.G. Wells The War in the Air London, 1908 H.G. Wells crafted stories that questioned where the future would take us. Lighter-than-air ships, or dirigibles, were the first engine-powered aerial ships. Wells pictured a time when such ships would become machines of war. His dark prophetic vision imagined the nature of aerial combat between the U.S. and Germany.
9. SIAHFW_150827_049.JPG: Wings: While tales of ballooning and fanciful flying machines fascinated the public, the reality of mechanized winged flight failed to take off. Many believed that motorized flying machines could exist only in fiction. Gravity could not hold down the future of flight as tinkerer and scientist alike aimed for the sky. Important breakthroughs were made in the mechanics of flight by studying birds, though many failed attempts were made off hills and cliffs, by inventors using mechanical wings strapped to their backs.
10. SIAHFW_150827_052.JPG: Robert Paltock The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, a Cornish Man: Taken from His Own Mouth London, 1783 Peter Wilkins tells the adventures of a traveler who is shipwrecked at the South Pole. He discovers a cave that leads to a subterranean world inhabited by Glums and Gawrys who fly by mechanical wings. These fictional flyers appeared the same year that the Montgolfier brothers made the first balloon flights.
11. SIAHFW_150827_056.JPG: Infinite Worlds: Exploring the Universe: Astronomers in the 1800s were mapping the sky and exploring the known boundaries of the universe, assisted by advances in telescopes and the invention of photography. The outermost planets of the solar system were found, and new star clusters were viewed. These discoveries reignited an age-old question: Could life exist on other worlds? The question of extraterrestrial life, at the time known as the "plurality of worlds" theory, was a hot topic of debate. Space was a frontier where science and the creative mind explored unknown and distant worlds. The emerging genre of science fiction took it even further, harnessing scientific thought to envision travel to Earth-like planets.
12. SIAHFW_150827_059.JPG: "Lunar animals and other objects discovered by Sir John Herschel" Sun newspaper, New York, 1835 On August 25, 1835, an amazing news story appeared in the New York Sun. The headline read "Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made by Sir John Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope." The account made the Sun the best-known newspaper in the world. Images were printed to meet the demand of a public who believed the satire to be true.
13. SIAHFW_150827_062.JPG: Infinite Worlds The Great Moon Hoax In 1835, Richard Adams Locke, a writer for the New York newspaper The Sun, concocted a series of fictional scientific reports claiming that Herschel had discovered "man-bats" on the moon. Locke's series targeted Reverend Thomas Dick, an influential supporter of the "plurality of worlds" theory. The story was so popular that The Sun's owner would not allow Locke to expose the truth, and the incident is now known as the Great Moon Hoax.
14. SIAHFW_150827_070.JPG: Leopoldo Galluzzo Altre scoverte fatte nella luna dal Sigr. Hershel [Other lunar discoveries from Signor Herschel] Richard Adams Lock claimed that "man-bats" -- to which he gave the scientific name Vespertilio-homo -- had been discovered on the moon. Locke's story took on a life of its own and was repeated around the world. This page from an Italian edition is titled "Diligenza per la luna [Coach to the moon]."
15. SIAHFW_150827_082.JPG: Leonid meteor shower over Niagara Falls Illustration from Edmund Weiss, Bilder-Atlas der Sternewnwelt [Image atlas of the star world], Stuttgart, 1892 The Great Leonid Meteor Shower of 1833 awakened interest in astronomy in the U.S. Primarily visible east of the Rockies in North America, the meteor shower was splashed all over the newspapers. The fiery display also ignited a new area of astronomy: determining the nature of meteors.
16. SIAHFW_150827_085.JPG: Science as Theater: Traveling science lectures, like the ones put on by Charles Came in upstate New York, helped spread scientific discoveries and knowledge to the general public. Lecturers used mechanically animated visuals, such as magic lantern slides, and enthralling experiments to present scientific thought as something wondrous, entertaining and even terrific in nature.
17. SIAHFW_150827_092.JPG: Mechanical lantern slide: lunar eclipse, about 1870-1900 Magic lantern shows were extremely popular forms of entertainment and education and many shows featured astronomy themes. The slides used hand-painted images, lithographic decals, or photographs on glass to show the moon, eclipses and comets, helping to bring the heavens down to Earth.
18. SIAHFW_150827_095.JPG: Camille Flammarion Les terres du ciel; voyage astronomique sur les autres mondes... [Lands of the sky: astronomical travel to other worlds] Paris, 1884 Flammarion was an astronomer, writer, and popularizer of science in France. His work of speculative science features illustration from the perspective of a moon dweller. His books helped perpetuate the "plurality of worlds" theory through the end of the 19th century.
19. SIAHFW_150827_098.JPG: Jules Verne From the Earth to the Moon Direct in Ninety-seven Hours and Twenty Minutes, and a Trip Round It New York, 1874 Verne's story relies on both the science and fiction of the time. A main character makes references to Poe's "Hans Pfaall" tale and Locke's Moon Hoax, as well as to contemporary science. Verne imagined employing artillery technology from the Civil War to launch a ship to the moon. His vision of a rocket launched from Florida foreshadows NASA launches from Cape Canaveral.
20. SIAHFW_150827_102.JPG: Patent model of creeping baby doll, 1871 Designed by George P. Clarke One of [the] earliest crawling dolls manufactured in America was based on this 1871 patent model. The clockwork arms and legs simulate crawling while the baby rolls forward on brass wheels. The lifelike automation, once an elegant mechanical amusement for the upper class, was on its way to becoming a classic childhood toy.
21. SIAHFW_150827_105.JPG: Edward S. Ellis The Huge Hunter; or, the Steam Man of the Prairies (Beadle's Half-Dime Library) New York, 1882 The word robot first appeared in 1921; drawn from the Czech word robota, meaning "forced labor," it described a humanoid worker in a play by Karel Capek. Decades before Capek, however, the possibilities of mechanization and steam power were already inspiring mechanical beings in fiction.
22. SIAHFW_150827_112.JPG: L. Frank Baum Ozma of Oz: A Record of Her Adventures... Chicago, 1907 Another precursor to the robot was the copper-clad Tik Tok, the Machine Man, from L. Frank Baum's Oz books. Unlike the better known Tin Woodman of Oz, Tik Tok wasn't alive; he was a mechanical clockwork device. Baum even provided him with a manufacturer's label and operating instructions: "Smith & Tinker's Patent Double-Action Extra-Responsive MECHANICAL MAN... Thinks, Speaks, Acts and Does Everything But Live."
23. SIAHFW_150827_115.JPG: Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life London, 1859 Darwin's theories are the cornerstone of evolutionary biology. Written to be accessible to more than specialists, his book had a wife impact, influencing writers to examine the era's rapidly changing society through the lens of evolution.
24. SIAHFW_150827_121.JPG: Rise of the Machines Mechanization The revolution in industrial mechanization that took place in the 19th century was astounding. Machines, animated by steam or electricity, accomplished tasks once done only by human hands. Artisans were displaced. The factory was here to stay. Clockwork automatons, entertaining novelties made to look and move like living creatures, had been around for centuries. But now the question arose: if machines could be made to work, could they do even more? Literary fictions of the time reflected this strange new world, inventing wonders like steam-powered mechanical men and speculating on the future. Where, in this rapidly mechanizing world, would machines take us?
25. SIAHFW_150827_127.JPG: Jules Verne Voyage au centre de la terre [Journey to the center of the earth] Paris, 1867 Verne showcased scientific fact in a fantasy setting. His heroes journey underground through our geological past, confronting extinct creatures come to life. He was well-read on matters of science, sharing a wealth of information gathered from popular science books, news of recent discoveries, and travelogues.
26. SIAHFW_150827_133.JPG: Underworlds Fossils and Geology Our understanding of the earth changed radically in the early 1800s. The discovery of the true age of the planet and the remarkable species that had inhabited it before us astonished the world, challenging long-held beliefs. By the 1850s, a curious public was attending lectures and viewing panoramic paintings of our world's distant history. Enthusiasts pored over geological guides and popular science books and magazines. Scientists reconstructed the first models of dinosaurs, and natural history museums displayed fossil specimens. As the new science of geology and the study of fossils evolved, so too did the imaginative possibilities. Writers like Jules Verne worked the new science into tales of adventure, recreating past worlds and imagining new ones.
27. SIAHFW_150827_136.JPG: George Cuvier Discours sur les revolutons de la surface du globe: et sur les changements qu'elles ont produits dans le regne animal [Discourse on the revolutions of the surface of the globe, and on the changes they produced in the animal kingdom] Paris; Amsterdam, 1828 French zoologist George Cuvier believed the earth was shaped in the past by violent, wide-scale events, a theory known as catastrophism. His careful observations of fossils drew important parallels between past and present life, and provided evidence of extinction. An engraving of a plesiosaur acquired from Mary Anning illustrates this later edition of his important 1813 work.
28. SIAHFW_150827_139.JPG: Charles Kingsley Glaucus, or, The Wonders of the Shore Cambridge, England, 1859 The pastime of shell collecting in the mid-1800s reflected the growing interest in the ocean world. Amateur naturalists and vacationers scoured the shores for specimens to add to their collections. Books on the identification of sea life, like Kingsley's Glaucus, were very popular.
29. SIAHFW_150827_148.JPG: Lost in the Atlantic Valley; or, Frank Reade, Jr., and His Wonder the "Dart" (Frank Reade Weekly Magazine) New York, 1903 Inexpensively published dime novels took to the oceans. Appearing weekly with recurring characters, they pitted inventor heroes clad in diving suits against undersea foes, and showcased technologically imaginative deep-sea vessels.
30. SIAHFW_150827_156.JPG: Sea Change: Underwater Worlds: The sea was a vital part of 19th-century life: distant travel, commerce, and the livelihoods of many depended on it. Tales of sea voyages, both fact and fiction, were immensely popular. As scientists explored the depths of the oceans, however, stories began to take place not just on the sea, but in it. In 1830, scientists believed the deep sea simply could not sustain life. Knowledge of the oceans had largely been limited to shores and shallow waters, but the mid-19th century saw the start of our exploration of this immense underwater world. Technological improvements to submersible vessels and diving gear helped make the seas more accessible. The bold plan to lay a telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean made understanding the ocean floor essential, and helped drive deep-sea exploration further.
31. SIAHFW_150827_159.JPG: 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas Underwater Worlds Jules Verne saw a model of the missile-like French submarine le plongeur at the Paris Exposition in 1867. It inspired his far more effective but wholly fictional ship Nautilus in his novel of 1870. Verne's book appealed to the public's growing fascination for the deep, blending undersea adventure with marine biology and technological innovation. The enigmatic Captain Nemo takes his captive guests through the world's oceans, teaching them, and the reader, a thing or two on the way.
32. SIAHFW_150827_161.JPG: Jules Verne Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas Boston, 1873
33. SIAHFW_150827_170.JPG: Siebe & Gorman Illustrated and Descriptive Catalogue: A. Siebe, Inventor of the Close Diving Dress London, ca 1870 Augustus Siebe's improvements to diving helmets in the 1830s resulted in the first closed diving suit, forerunner of the version used today. While only safely submersible to 600 feet, his invention made underwater engineering and the salvaging of sunken ships safer.
34. SIAHFW_150827_174.JPG: Matthew Fontaine Maury The Physical Geography of the Sea London and New York, 1855 Maury, superintendent of the U.S. Naval Observatory, turned to the practical experience of mariners, using ship's logs and charts to compile critical data on ocean currents, winds, and more. His extensive research included efforts to chart the Atlantic Ocean floor.
35. SIAHFW_150827_179.JPG: Crossing the Sea by Electricity Underwater Worlds In 1854, New York financier Cyrus Field began pursuing a plan to connect North America and Europe with a telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean floor. The project was challenged by repeated failures and technical troubles, but 12 years and five attempts later, a cable was successfully laid across the Atlantic in 1866. The transatlantic cable shrank the time it took to send a message between continents from ten days to mere minutes, and stirred a new interest in deep-sea oceanography.
36. SIAHFW_150827_185.JPG: Transatlantic cable souvenir Made by Glass, Elliot & Co. and Tiffany & Co. In 1858, a cable was successfully connected for the first time. Celebrations ensued on both sides of the Atlantic. New York's Tiffany & Co. purchased surplus cable and converted it into souvenirs, umbrella handles, and charms. But when the cable failed weeks later, the public's interest quickly faded.
37. SIAHFW_150827_191.JPG: R.M. Ballantyne The Battery and the Boiler, or Adventures in the Laying of Submarine Electric Cables London, 1883 Ballantyne was a prolific author of adventure novels for young people. The Battery and the Boiler dramatizes the laying of submarine telegraph cables, a monumental feat of engineering that changed communication forever.
38. SIAHFW_150827_198.JPG: Mary Shelley Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus London, 1831 Though not yet twenty when she began Frankenstein, Mary Shelley was no stranger to the creation and the loss of life. She bore three children, losing one in infancy, and lost her half-sister to suicide, all before the book was finished. "Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated," she wrote in the preface; "galvanism had given token of such things."
39. SIAHFW_150827_205.JPG: Luigi Galvani De viribus electriciatatis in motu muscalari commentarius [Commentary on the forces of electricity in muscular motion] Bologna, 1791 Had Luigi Galvani discovered the spark of life? During an electrical experiment, Galvani saw a scalpel touch a dissected frog on a metal mount -- and the frog's leg kicked. Further experiments led him to theorize that living bodies contain an innate force that he called "animal electricity." His observations on the workings of electricity in the body set the world of science abuzz.
40. SIAHFW_150827_210.JPG: Medical induction coil by Benjamin Pike Jr. New York, ca. 1850 The application of electrical shocks became a popular treatment for a vast array of medical conditions in the 19th century and beyond. The limits and intricacies of biological electricity were not yet known, but Galvani's findings laid the groundwork for modern neuroscience and electrophysiology.
41. SIAHFW_150827_215.JPG: The Body Electric Frankenstein Could the dead be brought back to life? The new sciences of chemistry and electricity emerging in the early 1800s offered provocative new tools to help solve an ancient problem: what is the nature of life? The experiments of Luigi Galvani hinted at electricity as a life force. In the summer of 1816, young Mary Shelley, challenged by her companions to invent a ghost story, began work on what would become Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus. Shelley had read of recent theories on the animation of matter and electricity's effect on the bodies of the dead. Her gothic tale explores the fate of an ambitious scientist who succeeds in creating life from death -- and of the creature he reanimates.
42. SIAHFW_150827_222.JPG: David Livingstone Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa: Including a Sketch of Sixteen Years' Residence in the Interior of Africa... London, 1857 Livingstone went to Africa to put his medical expertise to use, spread Christianity, and bring awareness of the slave trade to the public. His travels improved geographical knowledge of southern and central Africa. His popularity at home was immense: his Missionary Travels sold more than 70,000 copies within a few months of publication.
43. SIAHFW_150827_231.JPG: Jules Verne Cing semaines en ballon; voyage de decouvertes en Afrique, par trois anglais [Give weeks in a balloon; voyage of discovery in Africa, by three Englishmen] Paris, 1867 Verne's tale of African exploration touches on important contemporary issues lie the slave trade and race, and describes efforts to map the interior. His heroes trace the paths of famous adventurers Livingstone, Barth, and Burton and Speke, crossing the continent in a balloon outfitted with Verne's imaginary technological improvements.
44. SIAHFW_150827_235.JPG: Glass magic lantern slide: Livingstone and the lion, ca 1900 London Stereoscopic & Photographic Company By means of a magic lantern, a kind of projector, audiences could view scenes from Livingstone's adventurous life. Livingstone was a hero to many in Britain, and detailed accounts of his life and adventures were reported in magazines and newspapers.
45. SIAHFW_150827_242.JPG: African Exploration Adventure and Exploration Expeditions to Africa -- with its wide expanse and varied cultures, unfamiliar to Western eyes -- made for compelling tales. The public was transfixed by illustrated magazines with the latest news of adventures in exotic locales. Africa was sensationalized in the press, depicted as mysterious and fraught with danger. By the end of the century, the interest in scientific discovery in Africa waned, as explorations of the interior, missionary efforts, and commercial interests led to the occupation of African lands by European powers competing for colonial territories.
46. SIAHFW_150827_244.JPG: H. Rider Haggard King Solomon's Mines London, 1885 An instant best-seller, this was the first English novel set in Africa and an influential example of the Lost World genre of science fiction. Haggard lived in South Africa and modeled his hero after a famous big game hunter. Recent discoveries of ancient ruins, like Great Zimbabwe in southern Africa, inspired the plot.
47. SIAHFW_150827_249.JPG: Terra Incognita Adventure & Exploration Exploration to unknown lands provided the opportunity to learn about the natural world. Lured by commerce, empire, national pride, or scientific curiosity, travelers made countless scientific observations and returned with reports about little-known peoples, places, plants, and animals. By the mid-1800s, the polar regions and the interior of Africa were among the last parts of the globe to be seen and mapped by Western explorers. These remote locales became fixtures of popular culture, as armchair travelers read about perilous adventures in these new and unfamiliar worlds. Novelists adapted true-life narratives to their fictions and spun imaginative tales of adventure in unknown lands.
48. SIAHFW_150827_252.JPG: From Zone to Zone; or, the Wonderful Trip of Frank Reade, Jr., with His Latest Air-ship (Frank Reade Weekly Magazine) New York, 1903 A cheap price and colorful covers made dime novels popular with the growing literate middle class. Aimed at a young male audience, the Frank Reade series spun tales of adventure in exotic settings -- often in polar regions -- with the inventor hero traveling in futuristic airships.
49. SIAHFW_150827_260.JPG: Sheet music: "Northward Ho!, or, Baffled, Not Beaten" Words by Commodore John P. Cheyne; music by Odoardi [i.e. Odoardo] Barri London, [1879] A veteran of three Arctic expeditions in search of Franklin, British naval officer John P. Cheyne proposed a novel way to reach the North Pole; manned balloons. He gained public support through a lecture tour and the publication of this popular song, with lyrics by Cheyne himself. Scientists remained unconvinced.
50. SIAHFW_150827_263.JPG: Portrait of Elisha Kent Kane by unknown photographer Ambrotype, ca 1855 Kane earned respect and fame from both the scientific community and the public. He died far from home, in Cuba, at age 36. As the train carrying his body traveled from New Orleans to Philadelphia, crowds gathered to honor him at every stop.
51. SIAHFW_150827_268.JPG: Elisha Kent Kane The U.S. Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin. A Personal Narrative New York, 1854 Elisha Kent Kane, a Philadelphia surgeon, served as medical officer on the first American expedition in search of Franklin (1850-1851), financed by American merchant Henry Grinnell. While little was learned of the fate of the lost Franklin expedition, Kane's colorful narrative made him a popular heroic figure. From http://library.si.edu/exhibition/fantastic-worlds/terra-incognita : Arctic Voyages British explorer Sir John Franklin was one of many Arctic explorers seeking a Northwest Passage, a northern sailing route that would connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, opening a new avenue for trade. His first expedition to the Arctic (1819–1822) ended badly -- 11 of the 20 men in his party died -- but the public still viewed him as a hero. Franklin's narrative of the journey, published in London in 1823, mixed adventure and discovery with science, attracting public and scholarly audiences alike. Franklin's fourth and final voyage, however, an 1845 attempt to map a stretch of the Northwest Passage, ended in disaster. The two ships, the Erebus and Terror, became ice-bound, stranding the crew, leading to starvation and death from extreme cold, lead poisoning and disease. Rumors of cannibalism circulated. The story was a sensation in Britain and America. Lady Jane Franklin, the explorer's widow, sponsored numerous expeditions and was an active driver of the public's interest in solving the mystery of the lost journey, fueling the far-fetched hope of finding survivors. A considerable reward was offered, prompting numerous searches, over both land and sea. Elisha Kent Kane, a Philadelphia surgeon, served as medical officer on the first American expedition in search of Franklin (1850–1851), financed by American merchant Henry Grinnell. While little was learned of the fate of the lost Franklin expedition on the journey, Kane's gripping and colorful narrative made him a popular heroic figure. Kane earned respect and fame from both the scientific community and the public. He died far from home, in Cuba, at age 36. As his body traveled from New Orleans home to Philadelphia, crowds gathered to honor him along the way. "...the last of the Danish settlements. It is the jumping-off place of Arctic navigators – our last point of communication with the outside world. Here the British explorers put the date to their official reports, and send home their last letters of good-bye." -- Elisha Kent Kane, The U.S. Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin. A Personal Narrative, 1854
52. SIAHFW_150827_271.JPG: John Franklin Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea... London, 1823 Franklin's first expedition to the Arctic (1819-1822) ended badly -- 11 of the 20 men in his party died -- but the public still viewed him as a hero. Travel narratives like this, mixing adventure and discovery with science, attracted public and scholarly audiences alike.
53. SIAHFW_150827_276.JPG: Rise of the Machines Model of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 1 (replica) In the 1820s, British mathematician Charles Babbage devised a difference engine to automatically calculate and print accurate mathematical tables. Essential to tasks like navigation and engineering, such tables were prone to errors made by human "calculators" and typesetters. Not built in his lifetime, Babbage's invention was the first step toward modern computing. From http://library.si.edu/exhibition/fantastic-worlds/rise-of-the-machines : In the 1820s British mathematician and engineer Charles Babbage devised a mechanical calculator known as a difference engine to automatically calculate and print accurate mathematical tables. Essential to tasks like navigation, banking, and engineering, such tables had to be painstakingly verified and were prone to errors made by human "calculators" and typesetters - errors that could lead to significant loss. While not built in his lifetime, Babbage's inventive design for mechanizing calculation was an important early step toward modern computing. In 1834, Babbage moved from planning a difference engine to something more complex. He envisioned a machine that could be programmed by punched cards, like those that determined the fabric patterns produced on Jacquard textile looms. In addition to being programmable, his "Analytical Engine" had other features that would later appear in modern computers, including a separate "Store" (memory) and "Mill" (processor). Ada Lovelace, who collaborated with Babbage and is often described as the first computer programmer, saw the Analytical Engine's potential beyond the manipulation of numbers, noting that it "might act upon other things besides number... the Engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent."
54. SIAHFW_150827_305.JPG: Flights of Fancy: Model of 1903 Langley aerodrome Designed by Samuel P. Langley Between 1890 and 1903, Smithsonian Secretary Samuel Pierpont Langley designed and built several motorized flying machines known as aerodromes. A full-scale manned version, financed by the U.S. War Department, crashed within seconds of takeoff into the Potomac River in 1903. Despite the aerodromes' failings, Langley made significant contributions to the development of flight.
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2015 photos: Equipment this year: I mostly used my Fuji XS-1 camera but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. I retired from the US Census Bureau in god-forsaken Suitland, Maryland on my 58th birthday in May. Yee ha! Trips this year: a quick trip to Florida. two Civil War Trust conferences (Raleigh, NC and Richmond, VA), and my 10th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Los Angeles). Ego Strokes: Carolyn Cerbin used a Kevin Costner photo in her USA Today article. Miss DC pictures were used a few times in the Washington Post. Number of photos taken this year: just over 550,000.
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