Tapping the past
Jan. 23rd, 2004 03:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kickahaThree 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...
of the
of the
showing the
Operations, Expenditures and Condition of the Institution
and the
Proceedings of the Board up to February 24, 1855.
----------------------------------------
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.
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.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-25 02:29 am (UTC)Room a prerequisite?
Date: 2004-01-25 05:31 pm (UTC)Yesterday we went to The Reader's Corner in Raleigh (another used bookstore) to find gifts for friends and were sidetracked. Outside TRC, on the Left hand side of the front door are $0.25 books, on the right $0.10. If you buy books outside when they are closed, you pay by slipping your change through a slot in the door and all of the money goes to local public radio, and not just NPR.
Yesterday, they had just shelved a collection of books from the 1880s to the 1930s on math, grammar, algebra, and geometry on the $0.25 shelves. Kickaha and I brought home 3 shelf feet of them. I think they're here to stay.