Tapping the past

Three years ago for Xmas I gave my Grandpa a book I found here in Chapel Hill at a used bookstore. This past Xmas trip home, Grandma said it was mine, and I should take it with me before someone else in the family decided it was either trash or that they wanted it (we have some real gems in the brood).

Here's an HTMLized version of the title page, best as I can reproduce it quickly...

Ninth Annual Report

of the

Board of Regents

of the

Smithsonian Institution,

showing the

Operations, Expenditures and Condition of the Institution
up to January 1, 1855.

and the

Proceedings of the Board up to February 24, 1855.

----------------------------------------

WASHINGTON:

A. O. P. Nicholson, Public Printer.
1855.



It includes a report on the surveying of possible northern railroad routes to the Pacific, as headed by I. I. Stevens, Governor of the newly created Territory of Washington, and the most stunning little vignettes into a time when the US was still bright, shiny, new and hopeful.

It's truly an artifact from another age, and I simply love it.

In 1854, the entire budget for the Smithsonian Institution was $85,379.41. This book contains all the accounting reports from the purchase of the Institution in 1846 onward. Every minutiae of it's operation, research, and discovery is in here in glorious detail... it's simply amazing.

6000 copies of this were originally printed, according to the introduction. I think I paid $15 for this one.

Tapping the past

Three years ago for Xmas I gave my Grandpa a book I found here in Chapel Hill at a used bookstore. This past Xmas trip home, Grandma said it was mine, and I should take it with me before someone else in the family decided it was either trash or that they wanted it (we have some real gems in the brood).

Here's an HTMLized version of the title page, best as I can reproduce it quickly...

Ninth Annual Report

of the

Board of Regents

of the

Smithsonian Institution,

showing the

Operations, Expenditures and Condition of the Institution
up to January 1, 1855.

and the

Proceedings of the Board up to February 24, 1855.

----------------------------------------

WASHINGTON:

A. O. P. Nicholson, Public Printer.
1855.



It includes a report on the surveying of possible northern railroad routes to the Pacific, as headed by I. I. Stevens, Governor of the newly created Territory of Washington, and the most stunning little vignettes into a time when the US was still bright, shiny, new and hopeful.

It's truly an artifact from another age, and I simply love it.

In 1854, the entire budget for the Smithsonian Institution was $85,379.41. This book contains all the accounting reports from the purchase of the Institution in 1846 onward. Every minutiae of it's operation, research, and discovery is in here in glorious detail... it's simply amazing.

6000 copies of this were originally printed, according to the introduction. I think I paid $15 for this one.