United States Early Radio History

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This website contains articles and extracts about early radio and related technologies in the United States from 1897-1927. It is organized chronologically and divided into 24 sections. Each section is a long-form essay, containing numerous hyperlinks to reproductions or transcriptions of original primary documents, including documents relating to the efforts to provide entertainment and news over the telephone in the first decades of the 20th century. Essays vary in length, most 1,000 - 2,000 words, and many are original essays by the site's creator. The first section offers an overview of the individuals, activities, and technical advances that characterize the early 20th century. The subsequent sections include essays entitled "The Electric Telegraph" and "Radio at Sea." The latter argues that navigation was the first major use of radio and it helped to reduce the isolation of ships and save lives. There are also essays about the early development of the radio industry and the radio during World War I. "Early Government Regulations, 1903-1946" contains 18 documents covering early international and national control of radio and the final section on U.S. radio history covers such topics as "Washington D.C. AM Station History" and "Mystique of the Three-Letter Callsigns" about U.S. radio and television station call letters.

The site is a fascinating place for those interested in the early history and development of the radio and its subsequent effects on related technologies.

Forests, Fields, and the Falls

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This site illustrates the ways in which the late 19th-century history of Minnesota is tied to the rise of and connection between four industries: lumbering, sawmilling, farming, and flour milling. The site uses a comic book-like format (large picture panels with minimal text), and incorporates the diaries and personal recollections of four Minnesotans who participated as lumbermen, sawyers, farmers, or flour millers. The colorful format attracts attention and the short presentations are appropriate for younger viewers (elementary, middle, and even high school students). The site relies primarily on Flash to present the stories, but viewers can also read and view the stories in HTML.

Each segment provides links to outside resources (about 40 in all) for additional information. Explanatory links define terms that might be unfamiliar to visitors, suggest topics for discussion, and offer additional supporting materials (for example, the site links internally to approximately 50 period photographs and diary entries). Teachers may find useful the nine suggestions for classroom activities, such as analyzing photographic evidence or examining the perspective of one of the storytellers.

When They Were Young: A Photographic Retrospective of Childhood

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These 66 photographs capture the diverse experiences of children from many different parts of the world from the 1840s to the mid-20th century. The collection includes early 19th-century daguerreotypes, turn of the century studio portraits, and 20th-century prints and stereographs of young people. The portraits of children include those born into privilege, such as Tad Lincoln, son of the President Abraham Lincoln, and a young Theodore Roosevelt, as well as children of tenant farmers in Florida, California, and Texas during the Great Depression. There are also images of children from around the world, including children in Paris, Puerto Rico, Greece, and the Virgin Islands. There are poignant photographs of Cheyenne and Apache children from the Pacific Northwest, Mexican girls in Texas, and African American boys in Harlem.

The collection includes photographs culled from the American Red Cross Collection and the W.E. B. Du Bois Collection, in addition to pictures of African Americans in Washington D.C. by renowned photographer Gordon Parks. Four short descriptions (50 words) by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Coles and information about his book, produced in conjunction with the exhibit, When They Were Young, accompany the collection.

Philip S. Hench Walter Reed Yellow Fever Collection

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The U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission demonstrated in 1900 that the mosquito transmitted yellow fever. This archive is an extensive compilation of 5,500 items related to the Commission's findings. Documents span from 1850 to 1966 and include correspondence, reports, photographs, and artifacts. The site is organized into sections pertaining to six key individuals: Walter Reed, Jesse W. Lazear, Henry Rose Carter, Jefferson Randolph Kean, Albert E. Truby, and Philip S. Hench. Each section includes an introduction (800 to 1,000 words) and is searchable by date, series, subject, or keyword.

In addition, there is a 4,800-word essay entitled "United States Army Yellow Fever Commission." The Walter Reed Series (1874-1936) and the Reed Family Additions (1877-1902) comprise Reed's original letters concerning his seminal work with yellow fever in Cuba. The Jesse Lazear Series and Henry Rose Carter Series, which span from the 1860s to 1930s detail the men's involvement with the Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba and their careers in public health. The other series include personal and professional correspondence and research during the period of the Yellow Fever Commission's work in Cuba. A separate section entitled "Books" contains a first edition biography of Walter Reed and a 1941 version of Walter Reed, Doctor in Uniform, a biography for young adults. "Highlights" comprises a sampling of 30 unique documents, many of which comment on the importance of the Cuban American relationship. Those interested in exploring the history of medicine and science, social history, military history, public health policy, tropical medicine, and biomedical ethics will find this site of great interest.

University of Missouri-Columbia: Digital Library Collections

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This archive makes available varied material on English, American, and Missouri history, including speeches, pamphlets, plat books, and government documents. The collection of Daniel Webster speeches offers more than 100 items that, in addition to his addresses and speeches in Congress, include sermons, addresses, orations, and speeches in his honor, as well as some correspondence. The Fourth of July orations collection contains more than 100 items, including orations by John Quincy Adams, Charles F. Adams, and Daniel Webster. The site also offers a collection of more than 110 Missouri county plat books published in 1930, a collection of various items of Missouriana, and a group of four miscellaneous texts that includes an 80-page text on the liberty of the press published in London in 1812. The collection of 17th- to 19th-century British religious, political, and legal tracts contains more than 400 documents and pamphlets published primarily during the English Civil War. Each collection can be individually searched. For anyone researching 17th- and 18th-century transatlantic history, the political history of New England, or the history of Missouri, this is a collection worth consulting.

Urban Planning, 1794-1918: An International Anthology

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This site contains the full text of the 185 primary documents, roughly a 600-page book, dealing with urban planning. Dozens of journals, conference reports, books, official documents, and other sources are easy to navigate. In addition to the key word search engine, the site includes a topical bibliography that provides more than a dozen headings, and alphabetical and chronological bibliographies. Each entry also has a link to the full text of the document. Essays discuss a broad range of issues, including surveys of the state of urban planning, discussions of how urban improvements should be made, and details of the legal issues of land use regulations. Each document includes a brief (about 1,000 words) general introduction that sets the material in historical perspective. The selections on the site include Frederick Law Olmstead's commentary on the City Beautiful movement and continue to his son's discussion of housing developments in 1919. This site will prove useful to anyone concerned with urban planning or urban history and especially valuable to those studying how urban planning developed through World War I.

Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States

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This website is dedicated to the 30th president of the United States, Calvin Coolidge, presenting material on his political ideas and his life through three main sections. "The Homestead" includes a 1,000-word introductory essay with six photographs. The richest section, on the history of Coolidge, includes a chronology of his life. An archive of speeches from his time as governor of Massachusetts to his time as President is also available. They consist of 28 early speeches, 20 during his tenure as governor, 11 from him as vice-president, and 31 presidential addresses. Twenty-one essays (800 to 1400 words) include "Coolidge the Victim?" by Hendrik Booraem V and "The Day Harding Died" by Frank Greene. Also available is a compilation of Coolidge quotes arranged alphabetically from "advancement" to "xenophobia." Visitors may access 20 papers presented at a 1998 conference on Coolidge and reprinted in The New England Journal of History. The papers average 1,000 words and include topics such as Coolidge's relationship with the Northampton Irish and his presidential legacy.

Under "Ask the President," visitors could ask Jim Cooke, an actor who has played Coolidge in a one-man play since 1985, questions about the President's life. Today, the archives remain available.

Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia

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These materials come from a museum with approximately 4,000 pieces of racist memorabilia donated from Pilgrim's personal collection. Envisioned as an educational resource for scholars and students, this site contains most of the images within the museum collection, including sheet music, ashtrays, children's book covers, salt and pepper shakers, postcards, dolls, and matchbooks. The exhibit is divided thematically into 11 sections, including racist cartoons; Jezebel stereotypes; the tragic mulatto; and caricatures of the brute, picanninny, nigger, tom, mammy, coon, and golliwog. Each section includes a scholarly essay that provides historical context for the anti-black caricatures. For those interested in further research, the summaries (most between 2,000 and 4,000 words) offer extensive footnotes with primary, secondary, and online sources.

Of the 30 images within "The Brute Caricatures," users will find the covers of Charles Carrolls' The Negro a Beast, published in 1900, and D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation of interest. There are 142 picanninny images, including Buckwheat and the cover of the children's book "Little Sambo." There are images of 50 "Uncle Tom," 87 "Mammy," and 90 "Jezebel" caricatures, both cinematic and commercial. More than 100 pictures and objects bear the appellation "nigger," and 118 19th- and early-20th-century racist cartoons (2 Quicktime and 2 RealMedia) are available. The exhibit includes a radio interview with Dr. Pilgrim, along with links to 13 scholarly essays and relevant newspaper articles. The site will be of special interest to those researching the history of racist memorabilia.

Murphy and Bolanz: Block and Addition Books, Dallas County 1880-1920

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The Murphy and Bolanz Company, a Dallas real estate firm established in 1876 that was the official mapmaker for the City of Dallas, produced a set of maps that are detailed and rare. This site, made possible by a grant from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, is an online version of the Murphy and Bolanz maps, a nine-volume collection of approximately 3,500 maps. Although currently only three of the volumes are available through the site, all nine will eventually be digitized. The voluminous collection consists of details of each block in Dallas and some of the surrounding suburban towns, including original maps of most towns and communities in Dallas County from the 1880s to the 1920s. These maps contain layouts for neighborhoods, the name, and date of original property owners, as well as sites of early schoolhouses, streetcar lines, businesses, and parks. Users will find African-American, Jewish, and Catholic cemeteries depicted on the maps and the sites of early Dallas businesses, such as Neiman Marcus, Sanger Brothers, and Adolphus Hotel.

The site is searchable by index or by street name, personal name, building name, railroad, or geographic feature. This unique online collection holds enormous research potential for historians and genealogists, but also for preservationists who will value the abundance of architectural and structural information and for legal researchers who will find the early property ownership details indispensable. The maps are also a great resource for geography teachers and students.

Streetscape and Townscape of Metropolitan New York City, 1860-1942

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Between 1850 and 1950, the population of New York City grew from just under 700,000 to more than seven million. This collection of 1,300 photographs documents the manifold changes that characterized New York City's urban environment in this 100 year period. The photographs are gathered from several collections: 1896 street views by Staten Island photographer Alice Austen, 1911 panoramas of Fifth Avenue, Washington Irving's home in the 1860s, 31 photo-lithographics of mid-1800s Hudson River mansions, the Sperr collection of 335 photographs taken between 1931 and 1942, and a general collection of photographs divided by city borough. Highlights include Austen's images of New York City laborers (organ grinders, bootblacks, police men, messenger boys) and of her home life among the State Island elite—both rare subjects for this period, and the Sperr collection's documentation of the construction of the Belt Parkway. Part of the New York Public Library's renowned digital library collection, this website is essential for those interested in U.S. urban history, architecture, the history of New York City, and the built environment.