William Jennings Bryan (seated at left) being interrogated by Clarence Seward Darrow, during the trial of the State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, July 20, 1925.

Last November, a new donation of Scopes Trial Photos was made to the Smithsonian Archives and the Archives has posted them to a Flickr set about the trial.  Like the original set that was discovered in 2005, these new images are great visual historical resource for one of the key events in twentieth-century US history.

Clarence S. Darrow (center) standing near Rhea County Courthouse with unidentified man (left) and Arthur Garfield Hays (right), Dayton, Tennessee, probably July 20, 1925.

George Washington Rappleyea

Fred E. Robinson (at right) owned the drugstore where local business leaders persuaded schoolteacher John Thomas Scopes to consent to be charged with violating state law by teaching about evolution. The sign on the tabletop says: “AT THIS TABLE THE SCOPES EVOLUTION CASE WAS STARTED MAY 5, 1925.”

Check out all of the wonderful images out on Flickr!

Historians of science and technology may like to know that a selection of special issues and articles that have been published in Notes and Records of the Royal Society since the 1960s is freely available online here.  The items will be accessible until 28 February 2010.

The initiative is part of this year’s celebrations of the 350th anniversary of the founding of The Royal Society.

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What say the birds of Australia to this?” – Darwin’s Origin at the National Library of Australia

From the library:

Earlier this year, the National Library of Australia acquired a copy of the first edition of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, perhaps one of the most influential books of the nineteenth century. Believed to be one of the earliest surviving copies of Darwin’s work to have arrived in Australia, the Library’s copy was first owned by Dr William Woolls of Parramatta, N.S.W. and it bears his inscription and the date March 17 1860 on the front free end paper. Woolls, a clergyman and schoolmaster, was also a noted botanist. He wrote many articles and papers on the subject and was made a fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 1865 and was later awarded a doctorate by the University of Göttingen for a dissertation on the botany of the Parramatta region. His name is commemorated in the genus Woollsia, as well as the name of six species. The book contains many penciled annotations made by Woolls and these provide a fascinating insight into the reception of Darwin’s revolutionary ideas on a well-educated reader at the other side of the world. Although many of the annotations have faded with the passage of time, some of Woolls notes are still legible. While some of the comments show agreement with Darwin’s theories, other comments call into question the author’s statements, in a couple of instances drawing upon Australian examples. Next to a passage on birds learning to fear man, for example, Woolls has written “what say the birds of Australia to this?”

Also, on a more light-hearted note … A Science Carol.  According to the note that I got about it, it is …

Performed and produced by Christopher Last, Casey Walruth & Jeffrey Tucker, this podcast constitutes a dramatic interpretation of Steven Shapin’s book ‘The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation.’ Intended as a parody of Charles Dickens’ literary classic ‘A Christmas Carol,’ Last,Walruth & Tucker tell the story of Ebeneezer Scrooge, a miserly old scientist who embarks on a mystical journey to learn the true-meaning of science. Visitations by the Ghosts of Science Past, Present & Future help Scrooge to see that the scientific life is not exactly what he thought it to be, and that scientists themselves are as human as the next man. Dramatic acting, excellent scripting and good-natured humor make this a presentation not to be missed.

Beagle Journal Portrait (1889)

In this year of Darwin, there is a new resource from the Lloyd Library and Museum, called Darwin by Post.  According to its press release and about page, it was designed to be a fake Facebook page for Darwin and his friends.  But, in this special year, doing an exhibition about Darwin needs to have a really good hook and narrative.

Unfortunately, this exhibit seems to be put together in a hurry and without much thought for how it was going to work together and be used.  It provides no new information and highlights no new connections within his work or life.  Compared to some of the other recent exhibitions (like the Sedgwick Museum’s Becoming a Geologist exhibit), this is very basic.  That being the case, it is a very easy to use resource covering the basics of Darwin and his ‘friends’ but the most useful part of the exhibit has to be several of the images that have been included in the exhibit.

Either way, this little exhibition is worth a browse.

Got this today from the Center for History and New Media:

The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University is celebrating fifteen years of providing high-quality, free educational resources and tools to an audience that grows exponentially each year. Last year, sixteen million people visited CHNM’s websites and over two million people used our software.

The historians and technologists at CHNM feel lucky to serve this vast audience, but although all of our tools and resources are free, they are not without cost. With your help we hope to continue our service and innovation for another fifteen years and beyond. The National Endowment for the Humanities has given CHNM a rare challenge grant, which will match donations to CHNM’s endowment for a limited time.

Whether you use CHNM’s popular Zotero software for your research, get your daily fix from the History News Network, learn from award-winning sites such as Historical Thinking Matters and Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives, or scan through unique digital archives such as the Papers of the War Department, we hope you will make a contribution today. Your tax-deductible gift will help us to reach even more students, teachers, and scholars worldwide.

To make your donation right now, please visit: http://chnm.gmu.edu/donate/

From all of us at the Center for History and New Media, I thank you in advance for helping us, as our motto says, “Build a Better Yesterday, Bit by Bit.”

Needless to say, this is a good cause and worthy of, at least, a small donation.

Penland School of Crafts is a national center for craft education dedicated to helping people live creative lives. Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Penland offers one-, two-, and eight-week workshops in books & paper, clay, drawing, glass, iron, metals, photography, printmaking and letterpress, textiles, and wood. The school also sponsors artists’ residencies, community education programs, and a craft gallery.

I remember the first time that I heard of this school … I was quite surprised!  I was surprised, not just because of its existence, but because of its focus – they deal with contemporary crafts!  They are not worried about your basic traditional crafts or your basic craft ideas (aka, no learning to knit a sweater)!

Their educational philosophy is one of total immersion – students take a single course for a period of one to eight weeks in a workshop setting.  In other words, they believe in learning by doing.

Maybe at some point in the future, Jill and I will decide to attend some classes at Penland!  Some of them look really cool … especially the photography and glass-blowing … but all of them are really interesting.

Non-Western perspectives continue to gain significance in history and other disciplines. This publication, now in its second edition, aims to introduce the pursuit of science in Non-Western traditions through a series of brief essays and reading lists, in the style of a richly annotated course syllabus. It is an outline and guide to resources, not a complete survey text.

from Introduction: History Of Science In Non-Western Traditions

The History of Science Society has produced the second edition of its Introduction to the History of Science in Non-Western Traditions.  Traditionally, non-western has meant the Islamic world in the History of Science.  In this Introduction, non-western has been given a wider remit.  It covers China, India, Africa (but not Islamic Africa), Native American science, Latin America, Australia/Pacific, and Japan.  Read more »

Little did I realize the number of History of Science podcasts out there on the WWW …

The History of Science Society Newsletter did a Q&A on it last July, which featured the producers of two podcasts - Audra J. Wolfe’s Distillations and Elizabeth Green Musselman’s the Missing Link.  Unfortunately, it appears that both of them have suffered recently – Distillations going bi-weekly and the Missing Link being put on indefinite hold.  So, what is the future of all of these podcasts? Read more »

The Whipple Collections in Cambridge has added a couple of new sections on the Explore section of their website.  The newest section of the website covers the acoustical instruments in their collection …

Philosophers and scientists have always been fascinated by sound and music. So much so that there is a long history of interaction between music and science. However, the experimental science called acoustics did not properly emerge until the nineteenth century. The Whipple has a significant collection of nineteenth century acoustical apparatus, in particular several examples from the famous Parisian instrument maker Rudolph Koenig.

Besides this section, they also have very good sections on astronomy, microscopes, models, and interactives (including glass fungus, anatomy, compendium, et al). The website is a great location to find out basic information about many of the subjects. For example, check out the history of the microscope.

The Explore section of the Whipple site is a very good resource for students of the history of science and I will be working some of the articles from it into my teaching next Michaelmas!

If science is neither cookery, nor angelic virtuosity, then what is it? Modern societies have tended to take science for granted as a way of knowing, ordering and controlling the world. Everything was subject to science, but science itself largely escaped scrutiny. This situation has changed dramatically in recent years. Historians, sociologists, philosophers and sometimes scientists themselves have begun to ask fundamental questions about how the institution of science is structured and how it knows what it knows. David Cayley talks to some of the leading lights of this new field of study.

Downloaded the full set of episodes (listed below the fold) and have started listening to them.  The first one, by Simon Schaffer, is a great exploration of the great change in the study of science that occurred during the 1980s and 1990s (aka “The Science Wars”).  If the rest are as good as this one, they are definitely worth recommending to students and others who are interested in the history of science!

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