Joseph Garver, reference librarian of the Harvard Map Collection, displays maps of coastal Massachusetts from the 1600s to the 1930s and shows how cartographers have drawn the shoreline to suit their political and commercial goals. His presentation includes slides.
An audio version can be downloaded.
Joseph Cirincione, Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress, discusses the history and future of nuclear weapons, looking particularly at nuclear weapons production in Iran.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon John Kelly speaks on the historical background that has led to and grounds the current situations in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon and the U.S.'s involvement in the Middle East. He looks at what possible courses the U.S. could take now.
Audio and video options are available.
Professor Joyce E. Chaplin covers Benjamin Franklin's creation of one of the first accurate charts of the Atlantic Gulf Stream in 1768 and the history of scientific research in the British colonies, both by Franklin and other scientists, that allowed the creation of such a chart.
Curator and conservator Grant Romer talks about the formation and work of the Boston photography partners Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes and their studio on Tremont Row. Romer looks at the architecture of Tremont Row and how it impacted the work of the partners. His presentation includes slides.
Audio and video options are available.
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:
"In this lecture, Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, traces Franklin's career from his early days as an apprentice in his brother's Boston print shop to his involvement, at the age of eighty-four, with the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. Franklin was an autodidact, self-taught in every field he entered, but the virtue that he most embodied, Isaacson argues, was tolerance. The ultimate self-made man, Franklin's life remains essentially American."
The Alfred P. Sloan Museum of Flint Michigan presents local history, historic automobiles, and scientific principles. Historic topics are covered in the Hometown Gallery and Piersen Automotive Gallery. Collections include more than 125,000 artifacts including textiles, prehistoric objects, and more than 80 historic vehicles made in Flint.
The museum offers hands-on activities; exhibits; films; a vehicle conservation and restoration shop; archival access; arts and crafts workshops; group tours; group picture-puzzle scavenger hunts; more than 11 hands-on educational programs, ranging from autowork to the fur trade; a planetarium; and a lunchroom. Reservations are required for school groups. Separate reservations are required for use of the lunchroom by large groups.
Preservation Wayne seeks to promote awareness of Detroit's past and current achievements through tours, lectures, publications, and full-time accessibility to the media. Their areas of architectural focus include the works of Louis Kamper (18611953), architect of Book Tower and the Book Cadillac Hotel, and Albert Kahn (18691952), a major American industrial architect and designer of the General Motors Building and Detroit Police Headquarters. Other topics include the history of sculpture, residential structures, automobiles, skyscrapers, and theater in Detroit.
The organization offers a variety of tours and a lecture series.
"The Marietta Fire Museum has many items on display used by the Marietta Fire Department dating back to the 1800s," including, among other things, fire service clothing, firefighting equipment, and antique apparatus. Highlights of the museum include a photo "Wall of Flame" featuring photographs dating to the early 1800s, antique and international fire helmets, and vintage firefighting equipment and apparatus.
The site offers visitor information, photographs of all of the antique firefighting apparatus on display, and a virtual tour.
Professor Paul L. Penfield, Jr., follows the history and development of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since the department's founding in 1913. He discusses the contributions of the program to science and technology at large and the possible development of the program in future.