Library of Congress's Blog, page 49

Free To Use and Reuse: The Art of the Book

From an 1830 copy of “Historia de Mexico,” by Juan de Tovar. Artist unknown. Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

January’s Free to Use and Reuse sets of copyright-free prints and photographs is one of our favorites, as it beholds the beauty of the book. The book itself, of course, is one of mankind’s greatest inventions; the art that goes into the making, shaping, designing and illustrating of books around the world is another set of art forms. If you’re interested in seeing what other free prints and photographs the Library has online, just flip through the sets of them — travel posters are always a favorite, as are presidential portraits  and the Gottlieb Jazz Portraits.

The collection of book images, meanwhile, gives a tour of the planet, of the dreams and images of people as they have evolved through time. And as far as craftsmanship: The inks and dyes in these images are often as brilliant today as they were when pressed to paper, cloth or vellum, often long before the United States existed.

Our first image stems from Juan de Tovar’s “Historia de Mexico,” first published around 1585. Library curators note that Tovar a famous Jesuit priest and missionary, an expert in the Nahuatl language who collected pre-Columbian Aztec codices. The original images in his “Historia” were made by the Aztecs.

The image above is a watercolor from an 1830 copy of the book from the staggering collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps, a wealthy British collector who had, at one point in the early 19th-century, perhaps the largest private collection of books in the world. (He was known to buy the entire stock of bookstores.) The colors here — the reddish maroons, the stark yellow — bring us into worlds gone by, when the Aztecs dominated what is now central and southern Mexico.

From “Milton: A Poem in 2 Books.” William Blake, 1811.

Speaking of worlds gone by, William Blake, anyone? The above hand-colored illustration is taken from the British painter/author/engraver/mystic’s “Milton: A Poem in 2 Books,” a stunning work finished in 1811. The book is in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, part of the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection.

Blake’s work in this dazzling vision is to imagine — in poem, prose and art — a spiritual union with John Milton, the author of “Paradise Lost,” in a fierce quest to save “Albion,” or Britain. The preface contains a brief poem that recites the legend that Christ once visited Britain: “And did those feet did in ancient time/Walk upon England’s mountains green…” that was eventually used  for the beloved hymn, “Jersusalem.” It’s still often called Britain’s second national anthem.

The muscular, dramatic illustrations over 50 pages were made with etched plates that were washed over with watercolors and a gray wash. As Library curators note: “(Blake’s) mature style depicts the struggles of human nature in its deepest psychological and spiritual sense and gives Milton’s poem a meaning unfathomable by most readers of his day.”

Here, you can see the orange coloring is often wide of the flames, giving the work a flash of Blake’s intense passion. It’s been on the page for more than two centuries and yet you can still feel the dazzling heat, the energy, the vision, that drove Blake like a man possessed.

Illustration from “The Origin of Buddhism and Its Development in China,” circa 1486.  Chinese Rare Book Collection, Asian Division. 

Lastly, we come to China in the 15th Century.

This is a woodblock print from 1486 titled, “The Origin of Buddhism and Its Development in China.” The image is taken from volume 2 of the original 6 volumes of the work, and depicts Gautama Buddha during the period of his ministry. Buddhism originated in India more than 2,500 years ago, and likely migrated to China with Silk Road merchants and travelers some 2,000 years ago. The brilliant colors here — those blues! those greens! — are testament to the beauty hidden between book covers, patiently waiting through to the centuries to enchant viewers in a new age.

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Researcher Stories: Charles W. Calhoun and the American 19th Century

Historian and author Charles W. Calhoun. Photo: Bonnie Calhoun.

Charles W. Calhoun is Thomas Harriot distinguished professor of history emeritus at East Carolina University. He has spent countless hours immersed in the Manuscript Division’s collections. His discoveries have informed multiple books, including his most recent, “The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant.”

What first brought you to the Library?

I have long thought of the Library of Congress as my second home. My research in the Library’s Manuscript Division extends back more than 50 years. As an undergraduate at Yale University in the late 1960s, I wrote my senior essay on the political career of Walter Q. Gresham, a Civil War general, federal judge and cabinet officer. The Library holds a good-sized collection of Gresham’s papers, and I traveled by train from New Haven, Connecticut, to Washington, D.C., to examine them. I had previously used microfilm editions of the Manuscript Division’s collections of presidential papers, but now there I was, holding in my hands actual documents. I was hooked.

I can’t recall how many trips I made to the Library that year. I consulted not only Gresham’s papers but several other collections as well. Conducting this research and writing the essay was transformative for me. I switched my long-held career goal of becoming a lawyer to going to graduate school in history.

The Gresham essay wound up being the germ of my doctoral dissertation which evolved into my first book. My specialty is late 19th-century American political history, a subject for which the Manuscript Division’s holdings are particularly rich. Whenever I am developing a new project, one of the first questions is always: What pertinent collections are in the Library of Congress?

Over the years, I have used other parts of the Library, including the general book collection, the Law Library and the Newspaper and Prints and Photographs reading rooms — all of them, of course, superb. But I have spent most of my time in the Manuscript Reading Room. Its staff is absolutely top-notch.

Which collections have you used?

They are too numerous to list by name. For my Grant presidency book alone, I read more than 40 manuscript collections at the Library. Many of the presidential papers collections are quite large. But others rival them, including the 600-plus bound volumes of the letters of John Sherman, the senator and cabinet secretary. Some collections are small, comprising only a folder or two, but even these can yield useful gems. In addition to the Library’s own holdings of manuscripts, the division houses many microform editions of collections held elsewhere.

What are some of your favorite discoveries?

The examples abound, so I’ll mention just a few.

Benjamin Harrison in 1896. Prints and Photographs Division.

I was struck by how many of the ideas that Benjamin Harrison expressed in his college papers informed the policies he later pursued as a senator and president. The understated prose of Hamilton Fish’s diary takes us behind the scenes during the Grant administration — he served as Grant’s secretary of state. He not only brings policymaking and political maneuvering to life, but he also offers numerous choice nuggets, such as Grant’s thoughts of resigning within a year of taking office. In processing John Sherman’s papers, were the Library’s archivists dutifully preserving a manifestation of obsessive compulsion when they included a receipt Sherman kept for an umbrella he had left on a train? And the tiny collection of Jacob William Schuckers, private secretary to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Salmon P. Chase, contains a marvelous memorandum describing Sen. Charles Sumner as “an extremely intolerant man; a species of Sir Anthony Absolute in politics; very easy to get along with if you always humbly agreed with him.”

Tell us about your use of the presidential collections online.

In the era of shrinking research budgets and dwindling travel funds, the Library’s decision to offer these indispensable resources online represents a tremendous boon to scholarship. The shutdown associated with the COVID-19 pandemic underscores the wisdom of that decision. I am delighted to see that additional collections are being made available even while the Library is closed.

Viewing the materials online is a bit more cumbersome than flipping pieces of paper, but the payoff is the same. And you can do it in the comfort of your own home any time of day or night, seven days a week.

How would you advise researchers new to navigating the collections?

The reading rooms house finding aids for a great many of the collections. These describe in detail the materials in the collections (kinds of documents, dates covered and so forth), so that readers can target their research on what is pertinent. Over the past few years, the Library staff has updated and improved many of these finding aids. Many of them are also available online, so that one can plan one’s research effort in advance of making a trip to the Library (or in conjunction with using a digitized collection).

And, a point that is relevant to research in other repositories as well: You have to know cursive. Now that elementary schools are omitting instruction in this basic skill, graduate departments are enjoining their rising scholars to acquire it. But even for researchers of earlier generations for whom cursive is second nature, reading the handwriting found in historical collections can be challenging.

Oddly enough, I have discovered that many 19th-century newspaper editors suffered from terrible penmanship, sometimes making their letters practically illegible. Horace Greeley, John W. Forney and Murat Halstead seemed locked in competition for the prize for most indecipherable hand. Halstead’s letters are sometimes accompanied by a “translation,” perhaps prepared by a clerk to make them intelligible to the recipients.

But it is also true that handwriting may suggest something about an individual’s personality or character. I’m no handwriting expert, but it strikes me that Benjamin Harrison’s supposed cold rigidity may be reflected in his writing, which is precisely uniform but as jagged as a readout of an EKG. James Harrison Wilson’s brash egotism shines through in his bold, rounded, well-formed words.

What’s next for you?

I am currently working on a project examining the presidential elections of 1868 and 1872 won by Grant. I am particularly interested in these campaigns and elections as critical steps in the reconstruction of the American political system after its profound disruption by the Civil War and its immediate aftermath. Once again, the Manuscript Division is the first stop in the journey.

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Citizen DJ, Noah Webster and the Value of Copyright

Brian Foo, the Library of Congress 2020 Innovator in Residence and the creator of Citizen DJ, doesn’t always hang out like this. But it’s fun when he does. Photo: Shawn Miller.

It started, the story goes, with a back-to-school jam in the Bronx in 1973. There, in a basement rec room, DJ Kool Herc — aka Clive Campbell — stood between two turntables, switching between records to extend the instrumental breaks so his sister’s friends could dance longer. His parties became so popular he had to move them to clubs and even outdoors.

The movement he’s often credited with igniting — hip-hop — dominates music today. Fans can now mix their own beats from a source not often associated with the genre: the Library of Congress.

Citizen DJ, an experimental music sampling tool that launched on the Library’s website this summer, enables musicians to browse the Library’s collections — vintage audio, interviews, musical performances — and integrate them into their own productions.

The tool combines public-domain content — works available for anyone to use — with material copyright owners have consented to include. It is the brainchild of Brian Foo, computer scientist, visual artist and one-time break dancer. He’s also one of the Library’s innovators in residence, a program of LC Labs that encourages creative use of the Library’s digital collections.

“I was very much embedded in hip-hop culture and later in life appreciated sampling and collage and referencing as means for self-expression through historical interrogation,” Foo said.

Foo’s reuse of content carries out a vision from America’s earliest days. The framers wrote copyright into the Constitution to “promote the progress of science and useful arts” — that is, to add to the growing nation’s wealth of culture and knowledge.

Copyright law gives creators certain exclusive rights to benefit from their works for a limited time.  After the copyright term expires, the works become free to use and reuse. By allowing early Americans to reap the rewards of their efforts — by selling their books or maps, for example — the framers intended to encourage creativity. By limiting the term of copyright protection, they aimed to make knowledge accessible and foster still more creativity.

Noah Webster, whose spelling book and dictionary became staples of American education. Prints and Photographs Division.

Noah Webster — famous for his dictionary — played an outsized role establishing copyright in U.S. law. On Aug. 14, 1783, Webster obtained a Connecticut copyright for his 120-page spelling book.

Webster’s small volume became America’s first bestseller — schools that had closed during the Revolutionary War were reopening and needed books. The first 5,000-copy print run sold out within nine months and, the following year, the book sold 500 to 1,000 copies a day. Webster’s earnings allowed him to support his family and compile his dictionary.

His state, Connecticut, was the first to enact a copyright law — individual states had such laws before copyright was written into the Constitution. After Webster registered his book, he toured the country to press other states and the new federal government to implement copyright laws. His efforts earned him the moniker “father of copyright.”

Jedidiah Morse, author of bestselling geographies, not long afterward earned the distinction of filing the first reported federal copyright case. Represented by statesman Alexander Hamilton, Morse sued New York City bookseller John Reid for selling a geography that borrowed liberally from Morse’s work. Reid was ordered in April 1798 to cease publishing the offending geography and to pay Morse $262.50.

The U.S. Copyright Office, which today administers the copyright system within the Library, oversees the world’s largest database of copyrighted works and copyright ownership information.

Like Foo, many of these creators drew on works of earlier artists. Edgar Allan Poe’s poems, for example, gave rise to a long list of musical compositions — “Nevermore” by the rock band Queen, “The Fall of the House of Usher” by composer Philip Glass, versions of “Annabel” by Frankie Laine, Joan Baez and Stevie Nicks.

Bob Dylan pays tribute in his music to poets William Blake, Robert Burns, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and Archibald MacLeish — a Librarian of Congress from 1939 to 1944. The web series “Epic Rap Battles of History” draws on Dr. Seuss, Dickens and other literary figures. Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” has inspired pop music lyrics, episodes of “Twilight Zone” and “Battlestar Galactica” and more than a few commercials.

Foo’s ambition is to share the riches of the Library with new creative audiences. Citizen DJ features thousands of sound clips — each about a second long — from holdings across the institution.

Aspiring composers can draw on the Joe Smith collection, for example, featuring interviews with music legends such as Elton John, Ben E. King, Aerosmith. Or, they can use the Tony Schwartz collection of New York City soundscapes: honking horns, jackhammers, snippets of conversation. Or, they can incorporate audio from a Library musical performance by U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo, who donated reuse rights to the performance.

“From a copyright point of view, we have a really high bar that we’re setting,” Foo said. “We want to be able to say from a legal point of view, you can use this material for creative reuse, even commercial.”

Like Foo, documentary filmmaker Elizabeth Coffman incorporates earlier works into something entirely new, a long tradition in filmmaking — the blockbusters “The Wizard of Oz,” the “Harry Potter” film series and “Avengers: Endgame” are but a few examples of motion pictures adapted from literary works.

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and Ken Burns present Elizabeth Coffman the Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for her film “Flannery,” 2019. Photo credit: Shawn Miller.

Last fall, Coffman was awarded the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film for “Flannery,” a feature-length documentary she produced and directed with Mark Bosco about Georgia writer Flannery O’Connor.

Because of the film’s widespread distribution and broadcast potential, “I knew it needed copyright protection,” Coffman said.

Under current U.S. law, copyright protection takes effect the moment a work is created. But timely registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is required to secure certain remedies in cases alleging copyright infringement. So, Coffman registered “Flannery” with the Copyright Office once the film was completed.

That final step was probably the easiest task related to the film.

Telling O’Connor’s story required an intensive search for archival footage that was “funny, dark, weird,” reflecting the writer’s life and iconic fiction, Coffman said. Thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Coffman was able to hire two research assistants to help her track down materials, including “every photograph we could possibly find of O’Connor,” Coffman said. The grant also supported rights clearance, including payments to copyright owners for reuse of content, and the hiring of a composer and actors. Actress Mary Steenburgen narrated O’Connor’s voice. Three animators worked up graphics.

“Flannery had a good analogy for filmmaking,” Coffman said in her acceptance speech. “Writing is like giving birth to a piano sideways. Those who persevere are either talented or nuts.”

But in the end, Coffman said that documenting the writer’s place in American literature and winning the prize ended up being “one of the highlights of my life.”

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Library’s Web Archiving: COVID-19 Challenges

This is a guest post by Joe Puccio, a collection development officer in the Collection Development Office.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented challenges to the Library’s web archiving program not seen since the terrorist attacks against the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001. The program had just begun in 2000, and the Library rushed to pull together online material from all across the country after the attacks. The resulting archive is part of the Library’s permanent collection.

Since then, the web archiving program has collected an enormous amount of materials (more than two petabytes of data and over 21 billion files) primarily in event or theme-based collections that are proposed, approved and set up in a process that can take several weeks to complete.

In mid-March, the Library’s reading rooms were closed and practically all staff began teleworking because of COVID-19. By that point, the Library was already capturing pandemic web content even before there was a formal collection plan in place. In addition, since the Library is a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium, there was a desire to suggest sites for its global Novel Coronavirus collection. Our staff nominated sites for that effort. Also, by May, those same staff had recommended a substantial number of sites to be harvested for the Library’s collection, with more than 75 percent from outside the U.S.

Several things then became obvious.

First, we were rapidly expanding the number of sites to be collected, but still without a full collecting plan, as events were moving so fast. Second, the Library was approaching its crawling capacity under its current web harvesting contract. Third, there was growing uncertainty regarding the Library’s next annual budget, which had not yet been appropriated but was set to take effect on Oct. 1. Fourth, many other groups across the U.S. had already started COVID-19 archiving projects.

The Collection Development Office and the Web Archiving Team of the Digital Collections Management and Services Division developed  a collecting proposal that took into account both the scope and funding of the project. Robin Dale, the associate librarian for Library Services, approved the plan in mid-June.

The plan has three primary objectives that are being carried out by a collection team led by subject experts from the Science, Technology and Business Division. The first objective is to fill major gaps in our pandemic web collection. The second is to determine high-priority sub-topics within the U.S. The final objective is to better identify and organize material we’ve already collected.

The team has been highly selective regarding new nominations, with a primary focus on the U.S. The team is also planning for the eventual public launch of the collection, which has a working title of the “Coronavirus Web Archive.” Since the Library’s web archives program observes a one-year embargo on harvested content, that collection will likely be made fully available in the latter half of 2021. Small parts of it will be available before the full launch.

The goal is to have a well-balanced collection of archived pandemic-related websites that will be preserved and made accessible to the Library’s users.  Subject areas will include government information, social and cultural impacts, scientific material, personal narratives and everyday life.  Examples of sites being collected:

U.S. Department of Education: Covid-19 Resources for Schools, Students, and Families
Pandemic Poems
Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium (BDCC)
Independent Restaurant Coalition | Save Local Restaurants Affected by COVID
American Farm Bureau Federation: Impact of Covid-19 on Agriculture
Together LA Festival

Eventually, the Library will have materials in its collections on this world-changing pandemic in a variety of formats, both physical and digital. Web archives will be prominent amongst them. If you’d like to submit your own collection of covid-related photographs, you can apply to this Library program.

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Curator’s Picks: Copyright

 

A.A. Milne’s “When We Were Very Young,” featuring the first appearance of the bear ultimately known as Winnie the Pooh.

George Thuronyi, the deputy director of Public Information and Education for the Copyright Office, chooses some of his favorite historical items submitted for copyright registration.

Aka ‘Winnie’

Alan Alexander “A.A.” Milne registered many works with the Copyright Office during his lifetime — plays, novels, short stories, music. In 1924, he published a collection of children’s poems, “When We Were Very Young,” inspired by his son and his stuffed animals. What makes this work meaningful is that it included the first appearance of a character, Edward Bear, Milne soon would make famous under another name: Winnie-the-Pooh.

Twain’s Masterpieces

Mark Twain was a stalwart defender of authors’ rights and lobbied hard for international copyright protection, which finally was enacted in 1891. Detailed registration records for his literary masterpieces were painstakingly handwritten onto 4-by-6-inch catalog cards, including this one for “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” under the name Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

A Polka for Baseball

Perhaps no sport has inspired more music — and produced more copyright registrations — than baseball. This piece, “Home Run Polka,” was composed by Mrs. W.J. Bodell of Washington, D.C., and registered for copyright in a U.S. District Court in 1867. Bodell “respectfully dedicated” her polka to the National Baseball Club of Washington, a team of government workers, clerks, lawyers and war veterans who that year embarked on baseball’s first “tour of the West.”

The long forgotten pen. Copyright file photo.

Tool of the Trade

In the early 20th century, Copyright Office clerks used dip pens to record copyrights in ledger books. A busy clerk likely left this one inside a manuscript for the George Scarborough play “What is Love?” when it was registered in 1913,  and the pen remained tucked among the pages until it was discovered decades later. This style of dip pen also is notable because it was the inspiration for the Copyright Office seal used between 1978 and 2004.

Gloria Gaynor performs in concert at the Library on May 6, 2017: Shawn Miller.

“I Will Survive”

Gloria Gaynor scored a No. 1 hit in 1979 with this iconic dance-floor anthem of determination and perseverance. Dino Fekaris and Freddie Perren wrote “Survive” as a made-for-hire piece for Perren-Vibes Music Co., which submitted the original copyright application. Polydor Inc. submitted the application for the original sound recording of the single and for the album, “Love Tracks,” from which it was drawn. “Survive” was added to the Library’s National Recording Registry in 2015.

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A Visit from Santa…Who You Might Not Recognize

Santa, as described in “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” was a tiny, soot-covered elf who looked “like a peddler.” Illustration: Arthur Rackham.

Many thanks to Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, for his research help with this post.

People are always talking about the “traditional” Christmas that used to grace the American landscape, one that was somehow more pure, more spiritual and not caught up in commercialism. The problem is, no one can agree when that was, other than “a long time ago.” Snow was whiter. Air was colder. People were nicer.

The seasonal theme, it seems, is nostalgia.

For example, in the ever-popular “White Christmas,” sung by Bing Crosby in 1942, even then he was longing for a season “just like the ones I used to know.” Certainly we wouldn’t go all the way back to the Puritans, who considered religious spectacles, particularly around Christmas, to be an apostasy.

How about the era of the Founding Fathers, even the early 19th century? Not quite. Christmas trees weren’t really a thing in the United States until the 1840s, and Christmas wasn’t even a federal holiday until 1870. Even then, there was a political angle. President Ulysses Grant (not exactly known as a pious teetotaler) made it a national holiday in an attempt to give the North and South something peaceful and kind to unite around after the Civil War.

But Santa, you say! Now, there’s a tradition! There’s a … soot-stained, pipe-smoking, pot-bellied elf, looking sketchy in a dirty fur coat? With miniature reindeer?

That was the man himself as depicted in “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” Clement Clarke Moore’s poem first published 197 years ago today. It’s better known by its first line — “The night before Christmas” — and has been a seasonal constant ever since. The Library’s card catalog lists more than 300 different editions/adaptations through the years, and that, boys and girls, is truly, undeniably, an American tradition.

But in Moore’s foundational, myth-making rendition, Santa is not the large, barrel-chested grandpa that we have known for the past century or so. Instead, Moore’s version of Santa was written during the midst of the Industrial Revolution, on the eve of the Victorian era and half a century before the creation of the light bulb. Santa, as we know him today, did not exist.

The poem was first published anonymously in the Troy (New York) Sentinel newspaper on Dec. 23, 1823. Moore, a Biblical scholar and wealthy real estate developer in Manhattan, eventually claimed credit nearly 15 years later. A friend had sent it into the paper without his knowledge, he later said, and, as an esteemed literary figure, he said the simple poem had been intended just for his children. (The family of Henry Livingston Jr., a military man and sometimes poet in New York, also made a later claim that Livingston was the author. Livingston himself died before Moore claimed credit. Some modern scholars support this view.)

In any event, here’s every description of St. Nicholas in the poem:

But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick

and

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a peddler  just opening his pack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow

And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly,

That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf

One, let’s note that nowhere in the poem is “St. Nicholas” referred to as “Santa.” The actual St. Nicholas was a Christian saint, born in modern-day Turkey in the third century, who gained a reputation as a devout soul who was especially kind to children. His feast day was celebrated on the anniversary of his death, December 6.

Fast forward roughly 1,500 years. Some Dutch immigrants to New York gathered each year to celebrate his feast day, but with the Dutch nickname of “Sinter Klaas” (short for the Dutch “Sint Nicholaas.”) Washington Irving included this good-natured character in “A History of New York,” his satirical take on Dutch traditions in the region, published in 1809. Moore’s poem was written a few years later, and the jump from “Sinter Klaas” to “Santa Claus” had not yet been universalized.

Second, there’s no mention of the “fur” outfit being red, only that it’s covered in “ashes and soot,” which would render him — well, a grimy little mess. “Sinter Klaas” had no fixed appearance prior to this point, but was often portrayed as a thinner, sterner figure.

Here’s, he’s tiny and old, with a white beard, potbelly and a cheerful demeanor. In the 1931 illustration of the poem by Arthur Rackham at the top of this post, you can see something of how he was described, although by that point, Rackham skipped the soot-covered coat and the pipe.

Thomas Nast, “Merry Old Santa Claus,” 1881. Prints and Photographs Division.

It was a full generation later that America got the Santa that we’d recognize today.

This image was the creation of Thomas Nash, often credited as the “Father of the American Cartoon.” (Nash also came up with the modern images of Uncle Sam, the Republican Elephant and the Democratic Donkey.) Note that “Santa Claus” by now was the character’s name. Nash introduced his sketches of Santa in Harper’s Weekly, and the image above first appeared January 1, 1881. It quickly attained a status akin to an official portrait. Many of the trappings of the Santa story were supplied by Nast’s drawings — his red coat, his pipe, his workshop, and even his North Pole location first appeared in Nast’s Santa vignettes. This made sense, as explorers had not yet reached the North Pole. 

Later iconic renditions followed, such as in 1902 when L. Frank Baum (“The Wizard of Oz”) took a shot at an origin story with “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus.”

Book cover of “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus,” illustration by Mary Cowles Clark. Indianapolis: Bowen-Merrill, 1902

In Baum’s take, Santa did not begin life as a Greek/Turkish priest, but as a mythical creature tied into the world’s earliest mysteries. He’s found as a baby in the Forest of Burzee by Ak, the Master Woodsman of the World, and placed in the care of the lioness Shiegra. He eventually settles in the Laughing Valley of Hohaho (not the North Pole), delivers gifts to kids and is granted immortality. Here, in the illustration by Mary Cowles Clark, he’s rocking some serious red boots and pairing them with a stylish black coat with leopard-skin trim.

By that point, America had been seeing popular renditions of Santa for three quarters of a century, or about three generations. The children who had first read Moore’s poem were now grandparents or great-grandparents. The consensus had been reached on what he (mostly) looked like.

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A Seasonal Perennial: Who Invented Christmas Tree Lights?

A Christmas tree in the historic PNC Bank building, downtown D.C., ca 2000. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith. Prints and Photographs Division.

We run the answer to this question every couple of years in the hopes of (peacefully) resolving holiday trivia disputeswhich may or may not occur at family gatherings, in person or online. This first ran in 2017.

Thomas Edison, inventor of the first successful practical light bulb, created the very first strand of electric lights. During Christmas 1880, strands of lights were strung outside his Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory, giving railroad passengers traveling by their first look at an electrical light display. But it would take almost 40 years for electric Christmas lights to become a tradition.

On Christmas Eve 1923, President Calvin Coolidge presided over the lighting of the National Christmas Tree with 3,000 electric lights. Prints and Photographs Division. 

Before electric Christmas lights, families used candles to light their Christmas trees. This practice was dangerous, and led to many home fires. In 1882, Edward H. Johnson, Edison’s friend and partner, put together the very first string of electric lights meant for a Christmas tree. He hand-wired 80 red, white and blue light bulbs and wound them around his Christmas tree. Not only was the tree illuminated with electricity, but it also revolved.

But the wider world was not yet ready for electrical illumination—many people continued to greatly mistrust electricity. Some credit President Grover Cleveland with spurring the acceptance of indoor electric Christmas lights when in 1895 he asked for the White House family Christmas tree to be illuminated by hundreds of multicolored electric light bulbs.

Two children with a lighted Christmas tree in the middle of a train set. Prints and Photographs Division.

At the time, the wiring of electric lights was very expensive, requiring the services of a wireman, the equivalent of our modern-day electrician. Some have estimated that lighting an average Christmas tree with electric lights before the turn of the century cost $2,000 in today’s dollars. In 1903, General Electric began to offer preassembled kits of stringed Christmas lights, making their use more affordable.

Edison and Johnson may have been the first to create electric strands of lights. But it was Albert Sadacca, whose family owned a novelty lighting company, who saw a future in selling them. In 1917, when he was still a teenager, Albert suggested that the company sell brightly colored strands of Christmas lights to the public. Later, Albert and his brothers organized what became the National Outfit Manufacturers Association Electric Company. It cornered the Christmas light market until the 1960s.

This post draws on the science reference site, “ Everyday Mysteries: Fun Facts from the Library of Congress. ”  Subscribe to the blog— it’s free! — and the largest library in world history will send cool stories straight to your inbox.

Free to Use and Reuse: Fun and Games

Will Rogers playing horseshoes. Photo Bain News Service. Prints and Photographs Division. 

The Library’s Free to Use and Reuse sets of copyright-free prints and photographs collections are endlessly entertaining. Games for Fun and Relaxation, like travel posters, weddings,  genealogy and so on, are yours for the taking. You can download them, make posters for your home or wallpapers for your phone. Christmas presents? Sure.

Let’s check out three.

Will Rogers was a multimedia star before the term existed. The Oklahoma-born member of the Cherokee Nation was a hugely popular film actor, author, Broadway star, standup comedian, newspaper columnist, lariat twirler and horse rider. He traveled internationally as a young man, working as a trick rider in circuses in South Africa and Australia, before returning home to become a megawatt celebrity.

His one-liners are as famous as those of Mark Twain, to whom he is often compared. “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.” “Last year we said, ‘Things can’t go on like this,’ and they didn’t, they got worse.” “I never met a man I didn’t like.” He opened his act with, “All I know is what I read in the papers.”

You can hear him roast a convention of bankers in New York in 1923, addressing them as “Loan sharks and interest hounds.”

“You are without a doubt the most disgustingly rich audience I have ever talked to, with the possible exception of the Bootleggers Union, Local No. 1, combined with the enforcement officers,” he told them.

The self-described “cowboy philosopher” died doing what he loved — flying planes. He perished with famed aviator Wiley Post on a seaplane trip through Alaska on Aug. 15, 1935. They were taking off from a lagoon in the late afternoon. The plane flipped. Both men were were killed instantly. Rogers was 55.

Above, we see him at his ease, playing a game of horseshoes. There’s no city or date information on the photograph, although the image is from Bain News Service, which tended to focused on New York City and was most active from 1900 to the mid 1920s. The event looks official — there is chalk marking the boundaries, and his right foot is near an iron stake that his opponent would have tossed at — and he’s leaning forward, intent, ignoring the crowd of men and boys surrounding him. Check out those two teens in short pants and white shirts, one guy with his arm slung around the other. You just want them to be skipping school for this. Rogers is wearing a fedora and a tie, but he has removed his suit coat. As a man who made his mark riding horses, you know he’d want to toss a danged horseshoe better than any city slicker.

Girls playing hopscotch. Flatbush, New York, 1942. Photo: Marjory Collins. Prints and Photographs Division.

Hopscotch was and is a beloved sidewalk game, known to children for ages. This photograph captures a picturesque day in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. The girl in action is Chinese-American, the caption information tells us, and that she is playing in front of her house. She appears in the middle of the photograph, and appears to be the middle in age of her two playmates. It’s mid-morning or mid-afternoon, judging from the length of the shadows. (I’m going with mid-morning, as two of the girls appear to be wearing long-sleeve cardigans.) In the background, the woman walking towards the camera is carrying two bags of groceries; the gentleman in suit coat and pants appears to be wearing a Panama hat. In short, a regular summer day.

But … wait a minute.

The date on the photograph — August 1942  — tells us we’re in the middle of World War II, as does the credit line, the U.S. Office of War Information. That tells us that this almost certainly a planned photo shoot, rather a feature photography happenstance.

That month, news of the war was grim. The Nazis were beginning their siege of Stalingrad. They executed roughly 1,000 Jewish people in Stanislawów, Poland, as part of the Holocaust. The U.S. had just invaded Guadalcanal,  part of the Solomon Islands, setting off one of the most vicious battles of the Pacific theater.

So, a regular summer day revisited: In August of 1942, the United States Office of War Information wanted to project the idea that the American home front was quiet, peaceful and a place where little Chinese-American girls could play hopscotch on the sidewalk with no worries at all. Rather than just a peaceful image, it was more likely a manufactured image of peace.

Buckaroos playing poker on the Ninety Six Ranch, 1978. Photo: Suzi Jones. American Folklife Center.

Lastly, we have this terrific image of cowboys playing poker in 1978 at the Ninety Six Ranch in northern Nevada from photographer Suzi Jones. It’s part of the American Folklife Collection, “Buckaroos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada, 1945-1982.“

That collection includes dozens of motion pictures, sound recordings and more than 2,400 photographs. It focuses on Paradise Valley, which is both the name of a cattle-ranching valley and a crossroads community in Humboldt County.

Here, an open window provides the lighting for a midday poker hand, with a wood block doubling as a table and an empty cot doubling as a chair. You get the feeling that not a lot is at stake here, just a lunchtime diversion, but you never know. Those fellas aren’t all hat and no cattle.

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My Job: Rosemary Brawner in Copyright

Senior information specialist Rosemary Brawner helps the public understand copyright. Photo: Stan Murgolo.

Describe your work at the Library.

I am a senior information specialist in the Public Information Office at the Copyright Office. I provide expert guidance and advice on copyright regulations, policies, practices and the law. I am also a card-carrying member of the Guild and serve as its treasurer.

To have a great workplace and good morale, there has to be a balance between the organization’s and the worker’s needs. I like that I play a role in keeping that balance.

How did you prepare for your position?

In the beginning — 30-plus years ago — I didn’t desire to be an information specialist or the treasurer. I was young and had a baby, and I needed a job. I think it was lucky for me to find a job here since I love books and was in awe of the world-renowned Library of Congress.

I started temporary in the Congressional Research Service and then got my first permanent job in the Copyright Office in B-14 (where the applications were housed). I was like a sponge — if I had a question, someone in the office would answer me.

As my career progressed through the Copyright Office and doing labor union work, I knew that I wanted to help people. I worked hard to gain the experience that I needed to apply for the job. I believe that I applied for the job at least three times before getting it.

Once I joined PIO, if I didn’t know the answer to a question, I was determined to find the answer. Each day, I start off saying, “They are calling because they don’t know, so I’m gonna give them the best and correct answer.” To this day, I remember that there was always someone to answer my questions, so I make sure that I’m available to answer someone else’s questions.

What have been your most memorable experiences at the Library?

You mean meeting James Earl Jones, Chuck Brown, George Clinton, Fantasia, or speaking with Chuck Berry and Tom Benson on the telephone? No, the best memories are my interaction with staff at the Christmas parties, retirement parties, impromptu lunch meetings and outdoor events.

I like being a mentor to the work-study students and them tutoring me on “new math” and the current lingo. I like chance meetings and sharing greetings or a joke with the Librarian of Congress, Dr. Charles in the health office and other staff.

Why is sharing copyright information important to you?

Overall, I want to help people understand copyright. I like knowing that I provided a little knowledge to a person each day. I think copyright is underrated — copyright is the Cinderella team at March Madness.

My role is similar to a coach. I help the experienced players explode into stardom, the average players hone their craft, the rookies nail down the basics and fans have the best experience possible. If the team loses, I lose. If the team wins, I win.

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Mystery Photos…Solved!

Cary O’Dell at the Library’s National Recording Registry runs our Mystery Photo Contest. His most recent post, a Thanksgiving Edition, included 14 of his last 30 mystery pictures. Here’s his update.

Greetings all!

Thanks to your hard work over the past month, we solved five of 14 Mystery Photos posted just before Thanksgiving. That’s remarkable, particularly considering that readers already have figured out more than 95 percent of the original cache of 800 unidentified show business stills that we’ve been working to identify.

We’re now down to 25 pictures and we’ll post a selection from those in January. If you’d like to review the set of pictures we posted on Thanksgiving, click the link above. Meanwhile, enjoy these stories of five solved mysteries.

Marta Brennan

While it is wonderful to solve any of our mysteries, this one was especially pleasing. The identify of this All-American looking young lady had bedeviled us for the longest. We worked our way through a litany of guesses over the past few years, including Karen Valentine, Judy Strangis, Jody Fair, Dolly Read and even Joyce McKinney.  To many people—including me—this lady “looked” British.  Hence, I looked up many names from the British Isles, including Barbara Flynn, Janet Munro, Lalla Ward, Maureen O’Brien, Helen Worth, Suzy Mandel, and Janice Nicholls.

Finally, the magic eye of blog reader Collin Larsen identified her as Marta Brenna, an American actress.  Brennan’s sole TV credit was a small part in the 1978 star-studded mini-series “Centennial.” She also worked and toured in various stage productions. Today, she’s the editor of a film industry newsletter.  I reached out to her there and she confirmed that this is indeed her. Great job, Collin!

Brennan said she though this picture was taken around the time she was touring with Ray Walston in  “You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water is Running,”  a set of four one-act plays by Robert Anderson about sex and relationships. (Walston himself was a character actor who appeared in dozens of hit film and television series, perhaps most famously as  Uncle Martin in “My Favorite Martian” in the 1960s and, of course, as Mr. Hand, the buzz-killing teacher in 1982’s “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”)

Tony (Anthony) Costa

Collin Larsen did it again when he plucked the name of musician Tony (Anthony) Costa out of the ether for this long-unknown pic. Costa’s son, Chad, also a musician, confirmed that that was his dad and we dutifully crossed it off the list.

Costa grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and was known as a promising musician when he was a teen, appearing on local radio stations. A pianist, guitarist, vocalist and arranger, Costa formed the Town Pipers, a popular group in the 1950s. They performed in Las Vegas and Hollywood, appearing on “Tonight with Steve Allen,” the precursor of the Tonight Show. He eventually returned to Scranton and performed for years at nightclubs and recorded an album. Upon his death in 2014, the Scranton Times-Tribune dubbed him a local “musical icon” in his obituary.

“Fence Fixin’ ” — Oil painting by Luther F. Kepler, Jr.

Luther J. Kepler, Jr.

We had something of a leg-up with the photo of this painting, as we could make out the signature of the artist in the lower right-hand corner. “Kepler.”  But Kepler who?

An early internet search sent us to painter Fred Kepler but he said it was not his. Then we  thought this might have been a significant prop in some long-forgotten film or TV episode. Not that we could find.

But then sharp-eyed blog-reader Brenda Zook saw our Thanksgiving post! She did some adept detective work, identifying this as an early 1960s oil painting called “Fence Fixin’ ” by Pennsylvania artist Luther F. Kepler, Jr.

A native of central Pennsylvania’s Big Valley area, Zook said that she recognized the landscape and the Amish subjects. She was also familiar with the work of local artist Anne Fisher, which this painting greatly resembled.

Some online searching revealed that Fisher’s maiden name was Kepler. Aha! More online “doodling,” as Zook described it, turned up the records of a 2012 book auction at the Old Country News Library in Gordonsville, Pennsylvania, that included, among hundreds of other items, a July 1961 edition of “Mennonite Life” magazine.  The auction description of the item said it included a short essay and several reproductions of paintings by Luther and Anne Kepler, but that was it. The auction listing included no images. Zook, though, was not about to quit now. She searched until she found the entire magazine online in the archives of the Mennonite Church at Bethel College. And there, lo and behold, was “Fence Fixin’.”

Great work, Brenda!

Kanza Omar

Ah, the lady in repose.  This was another one I was about to give up on.

But then Collin Larsen (yes, him again), threw out a name: Kanza Omar.

Intrigued, I looked it up.  Kanza Mary Omar was born in Marrakesh, Morocco, in 1912, moved to the U.S. when she was 11 and became a dancer and actress. She worked steadily enough but never quite hit the big time. Her list of IMDd credits totals only seven films and though some of them are very well known (“To Have and Have Not”), she went uncredited in all of them.  Mainly, she toured the U.S. alone or with her dance company, introducing audiences to the “exotic” dances of other lands.

She was mentioned in newspapers a few times — when she became a U.S. citizen in 1943, and again in 1949, when she divorced her husband. One of their problems, she was quoted as saying, is that he had “no appreciation for her art.”

She passed away in 1958, at just 46, of a brain tumor. She left no heirs.

Collin wasn’t fully sure of this one. But two other intrepid researchers — devoted blog reader Andy Leahy and the Library’s own Laurel Howard — picked up the trail and went picture hunting on the web. One of the first things that popped up was a 1951 photo of “Princess Kanza Omar” in which she’s wearing the identical outfit/costume she is in the mystery photo. That’s one of our identifying criteria, so, ta-da! Another one of the list. Great job, all!

From left to right: Michele Metrinko, an unidentified gentleman, and Marsha Metrinko. Time, place and photographer unknown.

Michele and Marsha Metrinko

I had very little hope for solving this one, as I wasn’t at all sure it was related to show biz at all.

Certainly these two young women look pretty enough to be in a pageant. And, in fact, they were!  Early on in our online guessing game, it was suggested that the lady on the left was 1963 Miss USA, Marite Ozers.

I reached out to Ozers, who looked at the photo and said it wasn’t her. Rats.

But wait! Ozers wrote in the blog’s comments that the woman on the left was actually her Miss USA runner-up Michele Metrinko. I took up the search from there.

Michele Metrinko has had an amazing career. She became a government lawyer, business executive, philanthropist and a high-profile political activist on the Republican side of the aisle in Delaware. She married John Rollins Sr., the founder of Orkin Pest Control. Her real estate holdings in Jamaica include the famous Rose Hall resort in Montego Bay.

Meanwhile, heroic reader Andy Leahy saw Ozer’s comment and used Google images to look up Metrinko. There, he quickly noticed pictures of Michele’s sister, Marsha, who looked like the woman on the other side of that Hawaiian feast. And what you know, Marsha Metrinko confirmed that was the two of them! Alas, neither of them remember the man in the middle, or when and where this photo was taken. Still, we’re counting this mystery as solved. That’s so much, Andy, Collin and former Miss USA, Marite Ozers!

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