Library of Congress's Blog, page 97

Hearing Abraham Lincoln’s Voice

This is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Manuscript Division.

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Artist Jean Louis Gerome Ferris’s interpretation of Abraham Lincoln speaking at a flag-raising ceremony.

Imagine you can hear Abraham Lincoln speaking the words from his famous Second Inaugural Address: “With malice toward none; with charity for all.” What voice did you supply for Lincoln? Was it a resonant baritone, or a high-pitched tenor?

While many people expect that Lincoln must have had a deep, stentorian tone, Lincoln’s true voice was high pitched and reedy. It was this voice that Daniel Day-Lewis used to portray Abraham Lincoln in the 2012 film “Lincoln,” and which provides a close approximation of the real Abraham Lincoln’s voice.

A number of Lincoln’s contemporaries left accounts of his voice and speaking style. Journalist Horace White described Lincoln as having “a thin tenor, or rather falsetto, voice, almost as high-pitched as a boatswain’s whistle.” Others described it as “shrill” and “sharp,” which the New York Herald noted in February 1860 had “a frequent tendency to dwindle into a shrill and unpleasant sound.” For most listeners, however, the power of Lincoln’s words soon outweighed any discordant note in his delivery.

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Excerpt from “The Presidential Campaign,” published on Feb. 28, 1860, in the New York Herald.

Despite its high pitch, Lincoln’s voice carried, an important quality for speakers at large gatherings in the preamplification age. Observers noted that Lincoln’s voice had “much carrying power, that could be heard a long distance in spite of the bustle and tumult of a crowd.” The “rich baritone” of Lincoln’s rival Stephen A. Douglas may have been more pleasing to listeners during the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas Debates, but Lincoln’s tenor “had better wearing qualities” and could be heard by those at the far edge of the crowd.

Lincoln also spoke slowly, allowing his words to be considered and understood. While this pace may have accorded with Lincoln’s own speaking style, he clearly recognized the value of a slow cadence in a public address. Unable to attend a rally in Springfield, Illinois, in 1863, he sent a letter to be read aloud on his behalf, a draft of which is in the Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress. “You are one of the best public readers. I have but one suggestion,” Lincoln advised his political associate James C. Conkling: “Read it very slowly.”

Lincoln’s speaking voice carried the accents and phrases of a youth spent in Kentucky and southern Indiana. The most oft-quoted example is that of Lincoln’s tendency to pronounce “chairman” as “cheerman.” Among the research files of Indiana senator and Lincoln biographer Albert J. Beveridge at the Library of Congress is a list of southern Indiana dialect words prepared in 1924 by a correspondent who, like Lincoln, grew up that part of the state in a family who had lived there for generations. In southern Indiana, “window” became “winder,” according to Charles Remy; “learned” was pronounced “larnt”; and the word “reckon” substituted for “assume.”

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A section from “Words of Southern Indiana Dialect” provided by Charles Remy to Sen. Albert Beveridge in October 1924.

Lincoln’s misspellings in handwritten documents also suggest his phonetic pronunciations of some words. Interestingly, Lincoln frequently misspelled “inaugural” as “inaugeral.” He even misspelled the word in his inscription to his secretary John Hay, to whom Lincoln presented the handwritten manuscript copy of his Second Inaugural Address.

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Abraham Lincoln’s inscription to John Hay in presenting the manuscript of his
Second Inaugural Address, in which Lincoln spelled “inaugural” as “inaugeral.”

In addition to clues to Lincoln’s voice suggested by regional dialects and recorded by contemporary accounts, Abraham Lincoln himself provided actors in the future with a valuable gift for recreating his famous Second Inaugural Address. Lincoln physically cut and pasted the printed proof of his address into a script that served as his reading copy on March 4, 1865.

Anyone who wonders where Lincoln might have paused for emphasis need only consult this document for direction. Journalist Noah Brooks recorded that the audience applause after “both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish” led to a considerable pause before Lincoln intoned, “And the war came.” But Lincoln had already planned for the pause. Four little but powerful words were snipped from the paragraph and pasted on their own line below: “And the war came.”

And thanks to contemporary observers and Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance in “Lincoln,” we have a better appreciation of what Abraham Lincoln sounded like when the war came.

EverydayLOC: New Year’s Resolutions

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A hand-colored Currier & Ives lithograph, circa. 1876.

Happy New Year! There is something sort of refreshing to me about saying those words. I have always fully embraced the notion that a new calendar year, psychologically speaking, offers a particular moment to reset, recommit and reprioritize. Whether you call them New Year’s Resolutions or, as one of my dear friends refers to them, New Year’s Notions, it is a worthwhile activity to make a list of things you would like to do, be or see in the 12 months ahead.

Last month, I shared a list of ideas for engaging with the Library during the holiday season. For January, I dug into some suggested Library resources that might align with topics or themes you are considering to enrich your 2018.

Once again, we invite you to share comments or stories if you use any of these ideas, and we welcome your own suggestions!

Research your family genealogy: I am lucky enough to have a great aunt and an uncle who have zealously documented my family history. Whether you are starting from scratch, or want to build on existing information, the Library of Congress has one of the world’s premier collections of U.S. and foreign genealogical and local historical publications. Get started here.

Refresh your citizenship muscles: The Library’s Congress.gov web site is the official resource for federal congressional information. On this site, you can track legislation, follow legislative activity of your U.S. senator or representative and watch videos of committee hearings. To get started, try these video tutorials on the different stages of the legislative process.

Read a classic: A resolution to “read more” or “read some of the classics I have never read” is one we heartily endorse at the Library of Congress. Here are some ideas from the Library’s “Books That Shaped America” project and exhibition. A confession: I grew up in Oklahoma, and I only read “The Grapes of Wrath” when we did this list several years ago. It is never too late! Next for me from the list is “How the Other Half Lives” by Jacob Riis, inspired by this wonderful Library exhibition from a year ago.

Gain perspective on weight loss: So, it wouldn’t be a New Year’s resolution list without addressing the issue of weight loss, an annual and often depressing part of the “new year, new me” discussion. But have you ever considered the history? The Library’s Science, Business and Technology Division is where books on weight loss live (A Letter on Corpulence from the 1860s, for example—yes! This is a thing!), and the division has two blogs about it that might give you some perspective, or at least a laugh or two, here and here.

Watch the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song: This is one of our favorite events each year, highlighting the life’s work of a popular song legend. Learn more about this year’s honoree, Tony Bennett, here, and tune in on January 12 to your local PBS station at 8 ET in most areas (check local listings) to view the Gershwin Prize concert celebrating Bennett.

Register for a reader card: For those of you in the D.C. area, make 2018 the year you register as a reader at the Library of Congress. Many people don’t know that anyone 16 and older can get a reader registration card and do research at the Library. Be in the know and do your next project in the stunning Main Reading Room. I guarantee it will inspire your thinking.

Read more with the kids: Encouraging children to read is a special passion of ours. Check out all the classic children’s books (more than 50 of them) on read.gov. From the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” to “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” these scans of original editions are a charming way to read online.

Master world geography: For 15 years, the Library’s Geography and Map Division hosted “Places in the News,” an online resource offering maps and historic background on, well, places in the news. Although the site wrapped up at the end of 2016, it is still a really neat entry point for exploring world geography.

Subscribe to the LCM: The Library of Congress’ bimonthly magazine, LCM, is a wonderful resource for learning more about the Library’s collections and programs. Some upcoming issues we have planned for you cover topics like building African-American history, hidden figures in women’s history and Broadway culture. Subscribe here, and review previous issues on topics including comic books, design and photography here.

Veterans on the Homefront: A Wasp Born to Fly

This is a guest post by Megan Harris, a librarian with the Veterans History Project. It is one of four profiles that make up “Veterans on the Homefront,” published in the November–December 2017 issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine. This profile recounts the way in which Violet Clara Thurn Cowden was affected by her time in uniform.

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Violet Cowden aboard her plane.

As a farm girl growing up in South Dakota, Violet Cowden watched hawks soaring high in the sky and yearned to do the same. By the time World War II was declared, she had already obtained her private pilot’s license, so the decision to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program was easy.

As she said in her 2003 Veterans History Project oral history interview, “I thought, ‘Well, what better way to serve my country than to fly and do the thing that I love most, and I didn’t have to pay for the gas.’”

Established in 1943, the WASP program employed female pilots to fly domestically in order to liberate men for service overseas, and Cowden was determined to take part. Both underweight and under height, she gorged on bananas and put a wrap in her hair in order to pass the physical examination.

Her determination paid off. Cowden beat the odds to be accepted into the program: Out of 25,000 applicants, only about a thousand received their wings. Serving as a pursuit pilot, Cowden was tasked with retrieving planes from the factory and flying them to the point of debarkation. She loved the visceral experience of flying the P-51, the fastest plane made at the time: She said it felt like an extension of her body, as if she had been given actual wings.

The WASP program was disbanded late in the war, as male pilots began to trickle home from combat tours and the need for pilots was no longer so dire. Considered civil servants rather than veterans, Cowden and her fellow WASPs found themselves without veterans benefits and passed over for jobs in commercial cockpits in favor of their male counterparts. It would take decades of persistent advocacy on their part before their military service was recognized as such: They were designated as veterans in 1977.

In reflecting on her time as a WASP, Cowden said, “I certainly didn’t think I was a pioneer. I was doing a job.” The Women Airforce Service Pilots received the Congressional Gold Medal from President Obama in 2010. Violet Cowden passed away in 2011 at the age of 94.

Inquiring Minds: Raising a Curtain on Amy Beach, Musical Pioneer

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Amy Beach

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Amy Beach (1867–1944), whose musical accomplishments changed the way Americans understood the possibilities for women in music.

Born in New Hampshire to a prominent New England family, Beach was a child prodigy: by age four, she was composing simple waltzes; at seven, she began giving public recitals, playing works by Beethoven, Chopin and Handel; in 1885, she appeared as a piano soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

As a composer, her breakthrough came in 1896, when the Boston Symphony premiered her “Gaelic” symphony to almost unanimous praise—all the more remarkable because she was largely self-taught as a composer. In all, she composed more than 150 works; beyond the “Gaelic” symphony, she wrote “Mass in E Flat Major” (1892), a violin sonata, a piano concerto and quintet, choral and chamber music pieces and the opera “Cahildo” (1932).

Despite her success, Beach is not well known today outside scholarly and musical circles in the way many of her male counterparts are. Indeed, the New York Times reported in the fall that no major American orchestras had plans to perform her works for the 150th anniversary.

Caitlin Miller of the Music Division is doing her part to change this situation. Last month, she gave a lecture at the Library about Beach, including an up-close look at some of Beach’s work held at the Library. Miller’s lecture was followed by a performance of Beach’s work in the Coolidge Auditorium. Here Miller answers a few questions about this important composer and the special items in the collections related to her.

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Caitlin Miller, a reference specialist in the Music Division, has highlighted the work of composer Amy Beach this year. Here she holds a copy of an 1893 newsletter that includes one of Beach’s songs. Photo by Shawn Miller.

When and why did the Library begin collecting Beach’s works?

The Library first collected Beach’s published music through the copyright deposit program, starting with her first published song, “The Rainy Day,” from 1883 when she was 16. Beach’s main publisher was Arthur P. Schmidt, a German émigré who settled in Boston and started a company that published works of many distinguished American composers; in fact, the A.P. Schmidt Company became one of the largest music publishing and importing firms in the United States. The Library of Congress acquired the Arthur P. Schmidt Company Archives during the latter half of the 20th century, a collection that includes music manuscripts, correspondence and selected business and financial records from the company. As a result, we have substantial correspondence from Beach as well as music manuscripts for her works, a portion of which are in the composer’s hand.

Also, in the early decades of the 20th century, the Music Division’s first chief, Oscar Sonneck, reached out to Beach after discovering that we did not hold a copy of her piano concerto in our collections. We hold a typewritten letter dated January 7, 1911, from Sonneck to Beach where he states, “It seems a pity that our catalogue should contain so many scores of pianoforte concertos by European composers and not yours, which easily holds its own against so many works that have been published in Europe of late years.” Sonneck’s letter demonstrates the respect that the musical world held for Beach and her work.

We hold her response to Sonneck as well, handwritten on stationery outlined in black (she was mourning the death of her husband who had passed only about half a year prior to her writing the letter). Beach begins a conversation about the whereabouts of her manuscript for the piano concerto that eventually led to the Library acquiring a copyist’s manuscript of the score; however, this letter also voices her willingness to donate other music manuscripts to the Library’s music collections. Beach writes, “I take great pleasure in sending to you by express the original manuscript of the entire “Service in A” . . . for voices and organ, for deposit in the Library of Congress. I shall be glad to know that the score of one of my most important works rests in so honorable a place.” This score was the first of several music manuscripts that Beach happily gifted to the Library of Congress for safekeeping, including titles such as “Jeptha’s Daughter,” “Sea-fairies,” “Sylvania (A Wedding Cantata),” “Help Us, O God!” and others.

What inspires your interest in Beach?

Since I began studying music history, I have been drawn to studying and sharing stories about women in music. Beach was the first American composer to publish a symphony, and her “Gaelic Symphony” was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra—that fact alone is remarkable to anyone interested in women’s historical milestones. But upon reading Adrienne Fried Block’s fabulous biography of the composer, I was fascinated to learn that Beach’s education in music theory and composition was significantly limited compared to that of her male contemporaries. Beach was largely encouraged to study the old masterworks independently and teach herself—no residences in Europe to receive formal composition classes (she traveled to Europe later in her career, but not to receive formal training). To understand her achievements, one must explore her upbringing, her education, her marriage, her philosophies and the politics at play in the Boston musical community and in the world.

In honor of Beach’s 150th birthday, I wanted to organize a talk and display that would highlight her tremendous career, demand the attention of general music enthusiasts and encourage some thoughtful reflection on Beach and her works—and maybe even lure some researchers in the Performing Arts Reading Room!

Do you have a favorite item that you included in the display?

I tried to represent as many aspects of Beach’s career and compositional output as I could last month. I included her first published songs (“The Rainy Day” and “With Violets”) as well as her most popular songs (“The Year’s at the Spring” and “Ah, Love, but a day!”), the manuscript copy of her “Gaelic Symphony” from the Schmidt Archive, the Boston Symphony Orchestra program featuring the symphony’s premiere, scores for choral works in Beach’s hand, articles that she authored about music education, articles that sought her opinion on trends in music and more.

Of course, I’m always excited by the quirky and unexpected, so my favorite item that I included in the display would have to be a song of Beach’s that was published in a newsletter called “Our Dumb Animals,” printed in 1893 by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Beach’s song “Golden Gates” is printed on page 95 along with text celebrating “our good friend Mrs. Dr. Beach” for having composed “the first Mass ever written by a woman.” The text also explains why Beach’s song is printed in the newsletter: “Some time since she saw in ‘Our Dumb Animals’ a beautiful little poem, which so struck her that she has set it to music, and by her kind permission we have the pleasure of presenting it as above to our readers.” I love this item for a few reasons—first of all, it’s a fascinating newsletter in and of itself, but it also sheds light on Beach’s inspiration for this particular song and communicates a general interest in animal rights.

What would you suggest to researchers thinking about using the Library’s collections on Beach?

There is so much Beach material to discover in the Music Division’s collections! Between our published scores, the music manuscripts that Beach gifted to the division, correspondence we received and preserved in the division’s old correspondence files, music manuscripts and correspondence in the A.P. Schmidt Archive as well as correspondence found in other special collections, including the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation Collection and the Edward and Marian MacDowell Collection. In addition to our material, any Beach researchers should also know that the University of New Hampshire holds the Amy Cheney Beach (Mrs. H.H.A. Beach) Papers 1835–1956 and the University of Missouri-Kansas City holds an Amy Cheney Beach Collection as well.

My strongest suggestion, of course, would be to visit the Performing Arts Reading Room to view some of our material in person and talk to me or another of our reference librarians about the collections. And don’t hesitate to email us your questions via Ask A Librarian!

Update on the Twitter Archive at the Library of Congress

In 2010, the Library of Congress announced an exciting and groundbreaking acquisition—a gift from Twitter of the entire archive of public tweet text beginning with the first tweets of 2006 through 2010, and continuing with all public tweet text going forward. The Library took this step for the same reason it collects other materials – to acquire and preserve a record of knowledge and creativity for Congress and the American people. The initiative was bold and celebrated among research communities.

In the years since, the social media landscape has changed significantly, with new platforms, an explosion in use, terms of service and functionality shifting frequently and lessons learned about privacy and other concerns.

The Library now has a secure collection of tweet text, documenting the first 12 years (2006-2017) of this dynamic communications channel—its emergence, its applications and its evolution.

Today, we announce a change in collections practice for Twitter. Effective Jan. 1, 2018, the Library will acquire tweets on a selective basis—similar to our collections of web sites.

The Library regularly reviews its collections practices to account for environmental shifts, diversity of collections and topics, cost effectiveness, use of collections and other factors. This change results from such a review.

More information is available in the attached white paper.

Some important details:

The Library will continue to preserve and secure its collection of tweet text.
The Twitter collection will remain embargoed until access issues can be resolved in a cost-effective and sustainable manner.
The Library will work with Twitter to acquire tweets on a selective basis.

Attached is a white paper summarizing today’s announcement, as well as the original gift agreement with Twitter for reference.

Blog post: “Library Acquires Entire Twitter Archive,” April 14, 2010

Blog post: “The Library and Twitter: An FAQ,” April 28, 2010

Blog post: “Update on the Twitter Archive at the Library of Congress,” Jan. 4, 2013

Featured Item: Let’s Go Sledding!

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An 1887 advertisement for Star Toboggans, showing people sledding at night.

To celebrate the season, we’re highlighting a historical advertisement for Star Toboggans on our home page this month. The colorful sledding scene is part of the Library’s Popular Graphic Arts Collection, which contains more than 15,000 historical prints published between 1700 and 1900.

The prints depict images from everyday life, historical events, celebrities, popular destinations and more. Some, like the Star Toboggans piece, advertise products—in this case bobsleds.

American printmakers created most of the prints in the collection—the well-known printmaker Currier & Ives is well represented, for example. But publishers from many other countries are included as well.

The Library acquired the Star Toboggan ad in 1887, when the Phoenix Lithographic Company of Chicago deposited the art with a registration submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office. Many of the prints in the collection were acquired in this way.

For more scenes of the season, check out our Winter Wonderland Pinterest board!

World War I: Injured Veterans and the Disability Rights Movement

This is a guest post by Ryan Reft, a historian in the Manuscript Division.

Fans of the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire” may remember that World War I veterans grappling with disability occupied a critical place in the show’s story. Fictional vet Jimmy Darmandy (Michael Pitt) struggled as much with PTSD as he did with a limp derived from shrapnel embedded in his leg by a German grenade. Richard Harrow (Jack Huston), on the other hand, endured facial disfigurement so severe he wore a mask to conceal his injuries, though his wounds went far beyond the physical.

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The American Red Cross founded the Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men in New York City in 1917 to train amputees and individuals with damaged limbs. Soon, injured veterans became a main constituency. Here men with partial arm amputations are taught welding.

Artifacts on display in the Library of Congress exhibit Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I demonstrate the human cost of the war, the government’s response and the ways in which injured veterans helped push forward—even if in a somewhat limited fashion—the disability rights movement.

During the war, 224,000 soldiers suffered injuries that sidelined them from the front. Roughly 4,400 returned home missing part or all of a limb. Of course, disability was not limited to missing limbs; as the “Boardwalk Empire” characters demonstrate, a soldier could come home with all limbs and digits intact yet struggle with mental wounds. Nearly 100,000 soldiers were removed from fighting for psychological injuries; 40,000 of them were discharged. By 1921, approximately 9,000 veterans had undergone treatment for psychological disability in veterans’ hospitals. As the decade progressed, greater numbers of veterans received treatment for “war neurosis.” Ultimately, whether mental or physical, 200,000 veterans would return home with a permanent disability.

“[A] man could not go through that conflict and come back and take his place as a normal human being,” veteran and former infantry officer Robert S. Marx noted in late 1919. Marx played a critical role in establishing the organization Disabled Veterans of the World War (DAV) in 1920. He knew well the sting of disability: Just hours before the war’s ceasefire, he suffered a severe injury after being wounded by a German artillery shell.

With the larger American Legion, founded in 1919, the DAV worked to raise public awareness about disabled veterans, while pressuring the government to adopt programs to address their rehabilitation and reintegration into American society. Though far smaller than the American Legion, which claimed 850,000 members within its first year of its existence, DAV membership rolls topped 25,000 by 1922 and had 1,200 local chapters and state offices nationwide. Overlap between the DAV and the Legion was unmistakable; roughly 90 percent of DAV members were also legionnaires. In fact, Marx helped to found the Legion’s National Rehabilitation Committee.

Together, the two organizations placed veterans’ disability at the forefront of the push for veterans’ rights and benefits, including for “shell shock” or what today would be classified as PTSD. Due to the organizations’ efforts, in 1921 the U.S. government established the United States Veterans Bureau, a precursor to today’s U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

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Not everyone depended on the state for assistance. Paul Rugh (left) returned home struggling with a severe form of PTSD that prevented him from working. Rather than live out his days in a veterans’ hospital, his brother Edward (right), a fellow veteran, cared for him until Paul’s death.

The Red Cross and the government also acted independently to address disability. In 1917, the Red Cross opened the first institution dedicated to training amputees and individuals with damaged limbs: The Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men in New York City. Though not initially established for veterans, the institute soon found itself inundated with World War I soldiers. In addition to rehabilitating injured soldiers, the institute produced and distributed 50 pamphlets, broadsides and books focusing on rehabilitation in the first year after armistice. During 1918, the institute distributed 6 million copies of “Your Duty to the War Cripple” to New Yorkers.

The government established the Federal Board for Vocational Education in 1917; it produced the first studies on veterans’ disability. The following year, the Smith-Sears Vocational Rehabilitation Act passed, providing for rehabilitation and vocational training for disabled veterans.

Despite these efforts, the treatment of disabled veterans varied widely, and attempts to streamline it largely failed. Veterans lodged numerous complaints related to poor dining, housing and rehabilitation facilities. Counselors, meant to help steer veterans toward rehabilitation and vocational training, were seen by many veterans as distant and uncommunicative. Black veterans endured racial discrimination, greatly diminished facilities and systematic neglect.

Of the roughly 330,000 veterans eligible for rehabilitation, nearly half received some amount of training. It came with a steep price tag, however; in 1927 alone, the cost of rehabilitation exceeded $400 million. The following year, the vocational education board expended half a billion dollars in compensation for veterans.

Though not exactly a success story, the government’s role in rehabilitation did expand the development and institutionalization of the veterans’ welfare and demonstrated a commitment to restoring veterans to societal productivity.

World War I Centennial, 2017–18 . With the most comprehensive collection of multiformat World War I holdings in the nation, the Library is a unique resource for primary source materials, education plans, public programs and on-site visitor experiences about the Great War including exhibits, symposia and book talks.

Trending: Who Invented Electric Christmas Lights?

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A Christmas tree sits at the center of a Washington, D.C., bank, built in the early 20th century. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith.

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.

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

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.

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Two small children around a lighted Christmas tree sitting above a village complete with a train.

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.

Thomas Edison and Edward H. 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 .”

Rare Book of the Month: Caldecott for Christmas

This is a guest post by digital library specialist Elizabeth Gettins.

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A winter scene by Caldecott from the “Complete Collection of Pictures & Songs.”

This December, the Rare Book and Special Collections Division is revisiting the lively and whimsical illustrations of Randolph Caldecott (1846–1886), who customarily published works at Christmastime, giving his young readership a special holiday treat.

This tradition started as the result of a lucky circumstance for Caldecott. When Edmund Evans (1826–1905), one of England’s finest engravers and printers, lost the services of the popular and well-established artist Walter Crane, he needed a replacement illustrator for his publications. Admiring Caldecott’s work, Evans reached out to Caldecott, which resulted in two Christmas books, “The House That Jack Built” and “The Diverting History of John Gilpin.” Published in 1878, both works became instant successes. Caldecott went on to create many beloved works, continuing this Christmas tradition by producing two works each Christmas until his death in 1886.

The book that is the focus of this blog, “The Complete Collection of Pictures & Songs by Randolph Caldecott,” is a posthumous retrospective work of Caldecott’s published in London and New York by G. Routledge and Sons in 1887.

The engraver Evans undertook one last work of Caldecott’s to give homage. He engraved on woodblocks using photographed copies of Caldecott’s pen-and-ink drawings to etch his images. He then used a technique called chromoxylography in which a few colors could be used with each impression, creating a variety of hues and tones. This technique was inexpensive and could be mass produced, but it was also quite intricate, requiring an engraver of great skill. For Caldecott’s images, six blocks were used for each image to apply various colors and hues, making Caldecott’s busy and fanciful illustrations come alive. This 500-page treasure is fully digitized and chronicles the great talent of both Caldecott and Evans.

The American Library Association recognizes Caldecott with an annual award named in his honor. It is given to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children. Past recipients include well-loved artists such as Maurice Sendak, Ezra Jack Keats, Ludwig Bemelmans and Virginia Lee Burton, to name a few.

The Caldecott Medal is designed with scenes from Caldecott’s work. The front of the medal is derived from “The Diverting History of John Gilpin,” which illustrates a poem by William Cowper. Here, Gilpin rides his runaway horse.

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The reverse side of the medal is based on an illustration from the widely known nursery rhyme, “Sing a Song of Sixpence,” shown below.

[image error]Scroll down to view more of Caldecott’s wonderfully active and vivid illustrations that bring to life humorously depicted animals and the English countryside they inhabit.

Also check out the Caldecott Pinterest Board for “The Complete Collection of Pictures & Songs.”

And here are examples of Edmund Evans’s engraving for works by prominent children’s writers of his time:

The Baby’s Own Aesop by Walter Crane, engraved by Evans
Little Ann and Other Poems by Jane and Ann Taylor, illustrated by Kate Greenaway and engraved by Evans
Wonder Book by Nathaniel Hawthorne, illustrated by Walter Crane and engraved by Evans

Enjoy!

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Pic of the Week: Happy Holidays!

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Photo by Shawn Miller.

The Library of Congress honored Christmas and Hanukkah on December 13 with a program in the Great Hall of the Jefferson Building. Here, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, who started her career as a children’s librarian, reads “The Night Before Christmas” to children of Library staff and the public.