Okay, I don’t want to watch all the movies depicted in this 100 year overview of film special effects, but I did just add a few to my Netflix queue.

The full list, according to the description in YouTube:

• 1900 – The Enchanted Drawing
• 1903 – The Great Train Robbery
• 1923 – The Ten Commandments (Silent)
• 1927 – Sunrise
• 1933 – King Kong
• 1939 – The Wizard of Oz
• 1940 – The Thief of Bagdad
• 1954 – 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
• 1956 – Forbidden Planet
• 1963 – Jason and the Argonauts
• 1964 – Mary Poppins
• 1977 – Star Wars
• 1982 – Tron
• 1985 – Back to the Future
• 1988 – Who Framed Roger Rabbit
• 1989 – The Abyss
• 1991 – Terminator 2: Judgement Day
• 1992 – The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
• 1993 – Jurassic Park
• 2004 – Spider-Man 2
• 2005 – King Kong
• 2006 – Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
• 2007 – Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
• 2007 – The Golden Compass
• 2008 – The Spiderwick Chronicles
• 2008 – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Jessamyn pointed out the dust up over the dissapearing of PaperOfRecord.com, a historical newspaper archive.

OLPC Origins: US and Taiwan’s Hardware Lovechild
A deeper than expected history of the OLPC’s development. Part two of a three part series.

I asked for it in 2004, before YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, or Revver appeared on the scene, and before MySpace and Facebook added video sharing as a feature. Four years later they finally added it. Neil Rickards should get credit for creating the theme of “long photos” (Neil called them “moving photos”). And anybody who was around then isn’t the least surprised at how angry some are now about the new feature (see sarcastic response to that).

The first article database I remember using was Dialog, sometime in the late 80s or early 90s. Today I found myself amused that we used to call such things “interactive.” That is, you poked the command line interface with questions and it usually beeped a syntax error, all while they charge $4 per minute, plus the connection fees. (The image above is from a later CD-ROM version.)

A 1993 article in Phrack reminded me of some of the details and fun of such systems:

One of the research databases commonly used is the Dialog Information Service. Dialog is a subsidiary of Lockheed Missile and Space Corporation. It provides access to more than three hundred databases containing over one hundred million records. The significance of this service is that it joins all 300+ databases together, you can skip from one database to another simply by “beginning” the database. In the past, the user would have to individually call each database and pay an exorbitant charge to use it. Dialog eliminates this and keeps all the databases together. Because of the vastness, all sources are summarized with keyword searches. Dialog has substantial signup charges ($295. last time I asked them) in addition to the fact that each individual database charges an hourly rate. Each rate varies according to things like the relative importance of the topic, cost to put the information online, and the main determining factor: what they think the users will pay. Some database providers seem to defy any logical reasoning as to how they determined the cost to access their information.

Yeah, I used to walk up hill to school in a snowstorm too. More interesting is this picture of libraries and librarians of the day:

If you travel to your local university library you will notice computer databases to which you can access such things as doctoral dissertations (get brownie points by telling your professor how interesting his/her thesis was), medical research (look up that newly acquired disease that your doctor mumbled that you now have), even national newspaper articles. This is just another source of information at your disposal (aside from books that is). Popping up more and more in libraries are “fee based research services”. These are simply professional librarians who use research databases to retrieve the information you are too ignorant or stupid (or don’t have enough time) to retrieve yourself. Fees range from their cost only (ie, online charges) to upwards of $100. per hour of their time spent PLUS any online charges.

As you can probably deduce, it would be cost effective to use every possible free source of information before turning to online searchers. I recommend exhausting all the in-library databases before going online simply because the in-library databases are usually available on CD-ROM and you are not charged an hourly rate to use it. And don’t forget about all those free Internet FTP sites, Gopher, WAIS, WWW, and even usenet! Most librarians are just starting to pay attention to and make use of the Internet. However once you have read this article you will be well versed on one of the major databases that is being used by these research services. If you run into an online database in your library, I suggest that you know what you are doing, as librarians are very skeptical due to the fact that you are using their money to do your searching.

One hundred years ago the country was in the middle of a riot of library construction. Andrew Carnegie’s name is nearly synonymous with the period, largely due to his funding for over 1,500 libraries between 1883 and 1929, but architectural historian Abigail Van Slyck notes that the late 19th century was marked by widespread interest in community development, with broad recognition of libraries as a means of promoting individual development.

“For library patrons, male and female, young and old, the new library offered a pleasant surprise.” Libraries became recognizable landmarks, and recognizably public. “Readers could enter freely, safe in the knowledge that they were welcome.”

And inside the library the barriers were coming down. Where once a user needed to request materials from the librarian, open stacks became increasingly common with libraries constructed near the turn of the century. Historian Walter Langsam praised the development this way:

The Carnegie libraries were important because they had open stacks which encouraged people to browse. The open stacks were more democratic. People could choose for themselves what books they wanted to read. The libraries were meant to be for people of all walks of life.

(Van Slyck notes that Carnegie insistence on open stacks developed after the turn of the century.)

And while the widespread construction of libraries may have begun as “gifts of men grown wealthy during the [Civil] war,” they soon became valued institutions of the people.

libraries, information architecture, history, architecture, Carnegie libraries, Andrew Carnegie, 20th century, 19th century

The original Apple press release is gone (and gone from the Wayback Machine too), but back in 1995 Apple announced a different set-top box, also called the iTV, for a six-state trial of interactive television services.

Apple’s ITV system incorporates key technologies including a subset of the MacOS, QuickDraw and QuickTime. In addition, it includes an MPEG1 decoder and supports PAL and NTSC video formats as well as E1 and T1 telephone protocols.

The device was one of a number similar Apple media players (real or imagined). A page at The Apple Collection rounds up most of those past efforts. Of course, today Steve Jobs announced and showed off the real iTV, a $299 goody that brings Front Row from the computer room to living room.

Apple, Apple Computer, Apple iTV, apple media player, front row, history, interactive television, iTV

…The time for pedantic purism is past; if we wish to communicate with the larger audience, we must use language they understand. We do not have the luxury of defining our words, their definitions are thrust upon us by usage.

I was struck by how much that sounds like something I might have said about libraries — only more compact and pointed — but it’s actually my father describing his position on an argument at the World History Association annual conference a couple weeks ago.

Later, I’ll probably use his words to shape my long standing theme regarding the language we use. Every field of endeavor field employs specific, perhaps opaque, terms; our challenge is to make knowledge accessible to interested outsiders, not exclusive.

In this case, however, the argument was about how we define periods of history in differing geographic contexts.

…we should give in to popular demand and accept the term “medieval” as a global historical period, not just a European period.

If we think about it, we can come up with a dozen reasons why this argument is wrong, but another moment of thought reveals that there’s really not much alternative. And, for an group that identifies itself as “the foremost organization for the promotion of world history,” would they not be failing in that promotional mission if they isolated themselves by demanding a unique vocabulary?

exclusion, history, inclusion, language, medieval, pedantic, pedantic purism, purism, Wilfred Bisson, Wilfred J. Bisson, world history

Ian Chadwick’s In Search of the Blue Agave begins:

“Tequila is Mexico,” said Carmelita Roman, widow of the late tequila producer Jesus Lopez Roman in an interview after her husband’s murder. “It’s the only product that identifies us as a culture.”

No other drink is surrounded by as many stories, myths, legends and lore as tequila and its companion, mezcal. They transcend simple definition by reaching into the heart of Mexico, past and present. The turbulent history of Mexico is paralleled in the stories of tequila and mezcal. One cannot fully appreciate Mexico without some understanding of tequila’s place in its history and culture.

So as we celebrate Cinco de Mayo, that victory of Mexican forces over French invaders, raise a glass of tequila in General Ignacio Zaragoza’s honor.

(More of Michael Calderwood’s delicious photos are online.)

Mark Nelson’s Pripyat series on flickr is full of the pictures of desolation that people seem to be looking for as we solemnly honor the twentieth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

Google added high-resolution satellite photos of the area yesterday, and Pripyat.com offers both stories and photo galleries to help us remember.

It is there that I learned that Rimma Kiselica, the woman who has guided so many of those who’ve reported from the dead-zone, died on March 19.

Meanwhile, it turns out that people have started to graffiti the town. Mary Mycio, who wrote Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl, takes great offense at such things:

For someone like me, who considers Pripyat a monument — with universal lessons about folly, tragedy and our complex relationship with our planet — this approaches desecration.

While I respect Pripyat as a monument, Mark’s picture above does make me wonder. In a command economy, who orders somebody to make bumper cars or other carnival rides? How did the Soviet system work for such things?

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Today, on the twentieth anniversary of the disaster, Google has added high-resolution satellite photos of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the abandoned town of Pripyat.

Above is the plant; the damaged reactor is on the left. In Pripyat, the ghostly ferris wheel was easy to find, but where’s the vehicle graveyard? Update: here it is. Hat tip to “di” and “pero69″ for their comments.

Twenty years ago today at 1:23:44, the Chernobyl NPP reactor number four exploded. Five thousand tons of lead, sand, and other materials were dropped on the resulting fire in an attempt to stop the spread of the radioactive cloud. The world learned of the accident when Western European nuclear facilities identified radiation anomalies and traced them to the Chernobyl plant, forcing the USSR to make its first public announcement on the matter.

By November, the ruined reactor was entombed in a sarcophagus, and the irradiated equipment abandoned nearby, but the human scale of the disaster remains enormous to this day.

Despite this, a thread of fascination with the abandoned cities, especially near-by Pripyat, pervades much of the peer-produced work related to Chernobyl (David McMillan’s photos are an outstanding example). Day tours of the area are available from SAM Travel Company Ukraine (and maybe here too, but where are the booking details?).

Because of the need for power, the remaining reactors of Chernobyl NPP were kept in operation until 2000, and and even now there are 12 RBMK reactors like those at Chernobyl in operation in Russia and Lithuania. Safety (and training, I hope) is said to have improved. Westron, a joint venture between Westinghouse and Hartron, is bringing Western-style safety systems to Eastern European power plants, even though they often get paid in IOUs. (Sadly, “Western-style safety” may not mean what it used to. Practice here.)

Search MaisonBisson for more nuclear related stories.

1986, 20 years, 26 april, 26 april 1986, abandoned city, april, catastrophe, chernobyl, chernobyl nuclear explosion, chernobyl tour, chernobyl-4, chnpp, chornobyl, disaster, ghost town, history, nuclear catastrophe, nuclear disaster, nuclear explosion, nuclear power, nuclear power plant, nuclear reactor, pripjat, pripyat, pripyat river, radiation, reactor fire, russia, soviet, soviet union, tchernobyl, ukrain, ussr

Nearly 20 years after the initial events of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of April 26 1986, the story is still unfolding. This month’s National Geographic Magazine tells of the “long shadow of Chernobyl” — grown children of the disaster now fear having their own children while some elderly residents return to their old homes inside the 1,000 square mile, still contaminated “exclusion zone.” The print article seemed to offer hope, noting that even the pines of the “red forest” — so called because they received so much radiation that it bleached the chlorophyl from them, and some say the trees actually glowed — are beginning to grow back now. But the multimedia companion materials tell a somewhat more morose tale.

A note at ibiblio, however, brings to mind how different our world was in 1986:

Chernobyl has become a metaphor not only for the horror of uncontrolled nuclear power but also for the collapsing Soviet system and its reflexive secrecy and deception, disregard for the safety and welfare of workers and their families, and inability to deliver basic services such as health care and transportation, especially in crisis situations. The Chernobyl catastrophe derailed what had been an ambitious nuclear power program and formed a fledgling environmental movement into a potent political force in Russia as well as a rallying point for achieving Ukrainian and Belorussian independence in 1991.

Time Magazine did a ten year retrospective and has an index to coverage, but Wikipedia’s entry is rich with detail and potential lessons.

One of the most interesting lessons may be that the reactor was not designed in ignorance of the instability that eventually caused the Chernobyl disaster, but as a reasoned and calculated approach to the problems of the time (makes me wonder what Henry Petroski would say about it). The reactor was designed to operate using light water and un-enriched natural uranium, a technical marvel so unique that the wikipedia entry on heavy water explains:

Heavy water is used in certain types of nuclear reactors where it acts as a neutron moderator to slow down neutrons so that they can react with the uranium in the reactor. Light water also acts as a moderator but because light water absorbs neutrons, reactors using light water must use enriched uranium rather than natural uranium, otherwise criticality is impossible. In effect to achieve criticality in a reactor, one must enrich either the moderator or the fuel.

Because uranium enrichment and heavy water production are both complex and costly, it’s easy to imagine the engineers proud of their accomplishment and accountants relieved. It’s the sort of scene that looks different in retrospect, but one that we’re quite familiar with.

The biggest lesson may be that the best plans and procedures can never be substituted for well trained, knowledgeable people. In this case, the plant’s operators had no training on the peculiarities of the reactor design, and so had no way of knowing how non-standard operations during the planned test would change the operating characteristics, safety, and stability of the reactor.

It is a sad irony that the reactor actually became less-stable during low-power operations, and sadder still that the operators had neither any knowledge of this, nor any indication of it in the control room.

And all of that was made worse by the fact that in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, operators had no way of knowing that the reactor had been breached, and they were all receiving deadly doses of radiation as high as 20,000 roentgen per hour.

Kerry Cupit’s Chernobyl gallery begins with a photo from that first day following the explosion at 1:23:47 that morning. While the plant operators were doubtful of any radiation risk, the firefighters and later “liquidators” were told nothing of it. The extreme levels of radiation were described by one firefighter as “tasting like metal.” He died soon after.

It wasn’t until the night following the explosion, with two people already dead and fifty-two hospitalized, that officials finally acknowledged the scale of the danger and ordered the the evacuation of Pripyat and the surrounding area.

The evacuation left a ghost town. And despite the disaster, this empty landscape has captured our imaginations. The fictitious story of Elena, the “kidd of speed” who toured the exclusion zone on motorcycle became legend in 2004, thanks largely to the eerie and dramatic photos of abandoned Pripyat.

Architectural photographer Robert Polidori visited in 2001. The resulting book, Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl, is a study of the haunting desolation and, perhaps, of the serene beauty of these modern ghost towns. Jury Kosin’s Chernobyl album reminds us of the people consumed by the disaster. The photo at the top, of the secondary school south of Chernobyl, comes from Greenpeace.

1986, 20 years, 26 April, 26 April 1986, abandoned city, april, catastrophe, chernobyl, chernobyl nuclear explosion, chernobyl tour, chernobyl-4, chornobyl, disaster, ghost town, history, nuclear catastrophe, nuclear disaster, nuclear explosion, nuclear power, nuclear power plant, nuclear reactor, pripyat, pripyat river, radiation, reactor fire, russia, soviet, soviet union, ukrain, ussr, tchernobyl, chnpp, pripjat

The first license plate to remember Nevada’s history as the host of the US’s nuclear testing grounds drew criticism for featuring a mushroom cloud (see the plate on the right, above). Now it appears folks are at it again, this time with a plate that depicts the site’s area and includes the classic illustration of an atom’s electron cloud.

All of this generated enough interest to bring the local media out to the Atomic Testing Museum to gawk at the proposed plate, including an actual-sized rendition being shown off on a Lincoln Navigator.

license plate, license plates, atomic, atomic testing, atomic tests, nuclear, nuclear weapon, nuclear weapons, atomic testing museum, nevada test site, test site, museum, heritage, history, nuclear test site

Here’s another story from my friend Joe Monninger. This time it’s a piece he cut from a book he’s working on, but I’m happy to take his tailings.

king kong, kong, the original, original, real, true story, history, circus, animal welfare,

On NPR’s Weekend Edition today: an interview with Michael Segel, author of The Devil’s Horn, subtitled “The Story of the Saxophone, from Noisy Novelty to King of Cool.”

Adolph Sax’s instrument seems to have been controversial from the start. Other manufacturers tried to assassinate him, the Pope declared the church’s opposition to the instrument, Ladies Home Journal explained that it “rendered listeners unable to distinguish right and wrong.”

tags: adolph sax, devil horn, devil’s horn, horn, history, interview, king of cool, ladies home journal, micheal segel, noisy novelty, npr, npr weekend edition sunday, radio, saxophone, weekend edition

In a popular antebellum Arkansas story, a backwoodsman bought a 5-gallon barrel of whiskey, only to return a week later for another.

“Surely you haven’t drank that whiskey already?” inquired the astonished merchant.

“It ain’t so much,” replied the backwoodsman. “There are six of us, counting the kids, and we have no cow.”

It’s not quite as detailed as some of the stories in the Foxfire books, but it’s a good treat.

tags: alcohol, arkansas, arkansas history, backwoodsman, foxfire, history, john barleycorn, moonshine, moonshining, prohibition, sourmash, whiskey

I’m entirely captivated by Mark Michaelson’s collection of mug shots on Flickr. It’s titled “Least Wanted” and he notes with little fanfare that they’re “Nobody famous.”

Some of the photos contain little histories, like this set from the 40s and 50s that includes conviction details — “30 days W. H.” for “selling obscene literature.” Another image shows rapid aging over a three year period starting in 1943. It’s part of a small collection of recidivist women of the 1940s.

For most of Michaelson’s images, however, there’s little to describe who these people are or why their photos became a part of public record. Each is its own little mystery, and it’s hard not to want to look at all 422.

tags: 1940s, accused criminal, arrest, crime, criminology, history, law enforcement, mug shot, mug shots, photos, police, police photo, police photos, recidivism, recidivist