The Railroad maps represent an important historical record, illustrating the growth of travel and settlement as well as the development of industry and agriculture in the United States. They depict the development of cartographic style and technique, highlighting the achievement of early railroaders. Included in the collection are progress report surveys for individual lines, official government surveys, promotional maps, maps showing land grants and rights-of-way, and route guides published by commercial firms.
All of the items presented here are documented in 0RAILROAD MAPS of the United States compiled by Andrew M. Modelski in 1975. The bibliography contains 623 railroad maps of the United States.
This Library of Congress American Memory site features images and descriptions of 623 railroad maps selected from more than 3000 regional, state, and county maps in the Library's Geography and Map Division. The selected items represent the variety of cartographic styles and techniques used in maps created for a range of purposes, including railroad surveys, U.S. General Land Office maps, surveys for rights of way, general surveys for railroad company reports, maps used by commercial publications, ticket agents and the public, and route guides to encourage commerce and travel by rail. The maps on this site were featured in the cartobibliography Railroad Maps of the United States: A Selective Annotated Bibliography of Original 19th Century Maps in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress, compiled by Andrew M. Modelski (1975). A descriptive summary of 50-100 words and notes on the scale, publication place and date, medium, call numbers, and repository accompany each image. The site also includes a lengthy (3000-word) essay outlining the history of railroads and maps, a bibliography of eight related works, and links to many American Memory sites containing related materials. The site can be searched by keyword and browsed by geographic location, subject, map creator, title, and railroad lines. This site is ideal for students and teachers interested in the history of railroads, cartography, and transportation in the United States.
Unraveling past climate conditions by drilling through kilometers of ice is surely one of our era's grand accomplishments. Future generations will want to study how it was done but they will fail unless the participants act now to secure a high-quality historical record. Around 1999 three leading scientific organizations, the American Meteorological Society (GATE project history), the American Geophysical Union (solar variability history), and the American Institute of Physics (Center for History of Physics), with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, formed a consortium to experiment with using the World Wide Web to locate, create, and preserve historical documentation in science and technology. The aim was to find ways to establish low-cost mechanisms for gathering much historical information that would otherwise be lost to posterity. A continuation of this effort is the History of Recent Science and Technology Project.
Three scientific organizations: the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Institute of Physics (Center for History of Physics) have developed this site to collect the first-hand accounts of those involved with the Greenland Ice Sheet Projects (GISP1 and GISP2) and the development of deep-core ice drilling. The site asks for the memories of scientists, engineers, students, financial backers and others who participated in these research efforts. Participants can send material to the American Institute of Physics, which runs the site, or join an online discussion newsgroup on a variety of topics relating to the GISP efforts. In addition, there is a brief historical essay on ice drilling and its scientific importance and links to other related sites. This site is funded by the Sloan Foundation.
The Census Bureau's solution was to have a competition to find a new method by which the census could be tabulated. Herman Hollerith entered and won this competition. With his victory, not only did Hollerith make it possible to complete the census in a reasonable time frame, but his methods, which were used well into the 1960s, offered a foundation for the future collection of all types of data1. With his invention Hollerith allowed for the creation of one of the most dominant corporations of the computer age and secured his place in history as the father of information processing.
Account of Hollerith's life, particularly with regards to his development of a tabulating machine for the US Census Bureau. Contains brief listings of bibliographical and online resources.
A collection of historical documents relating to the history of the steam engine
A searchable collection of historical books and articles about the steam engine. Several good sources, but page has not been updated since 2000.
Although Hollerith made a very significant contribution to the development of the modern electronic computer with his punched card technology not all his ideas were similar great successes. In the 1880s, at the same time as he was developing his first punched card system, he invented a new brake system for trains. However his electrically actuated brake system lost out to the Westinghouse steam-actuated brake.
Short account of the life and work of Herman Hollerith. Part of a large biographical collection of mathematicians.
Welcome to the world of physicist, biophysicist, and "scientist of conscience" Leo Szilard (1898-1964). How do you say it? Say SIL-ahrd.
Szilard's ideas included the linear accelerator, cyclotron, electron microscope, and nuclear chain reaction. Equally important was his insistence that scientists accept moral responsibility for the consequences of their work.
In his classic 1929 paper on Maxwell's Demon, Szilard identified the unit or "bit" of information. The World Wide Web that you now travel, and the computers that make it possible, show the importance of his long-unappreciated idea.
This site is dedicated to the life and work of Leo Szilard, a European physicist who contributed to the development of the atomic bomb, but protested its use. The site focuses on Szilard's role in advocating arms control. The opening page is basic in design, with a couple of images, a small amount of text, and a list of links. A visitor must follow these links to find the bulk of the information. The site contains images, transcriptions of interviews and speeches, audio clips, a short bibliography, a biographical timeline, and links to external sources of information. Perhaps the most useful of these external links take a browser to the online index to the Leo Szilard papers housed at the University of California, San Diego.
A
new site
that is dedicated
to the memory of the
many African-American inventors
that have helped
to develop this land of Diaspora that we have built.
In honor of the Manuscript Division's centennial, its staff has selected for online display approximately ninety representative documents spanning from the fifteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Included are the papers of presidents, cabinet ministers, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, military officers and diplomats, reformers and political activists, artists and writers, scientists and inventors, and other prominent Americans whose lives reflect our country's evolution. Most of the selected items fall within one of eight major themes or categories which reflect the division's strengths. Each of these themes is the focus of a separate essay containing links to digital reproductions of selected documents. A detailed description accompanies each document, and additional information about the parent collections may be obtained by following links to catalog records and finding aids.
A Library of Congress Manuscript Division online exhibit to celebrate the Manuscript Division's centenary, this site contains approximately 90 representative documents from the 15th to the mid-20th century. The selected documents include the papers of presidents, cabinet ministers, congressmen, Supereme Court justices, military officers, diplomats, reformers, artists, writers, scientists, and other Americans who made a mark in history. Most items fall with eight categories that reflect the division's strengths: "The Presidency"; "Congress, Law, and Politics"; "Military Affairs"; "Diplomacy and Foreign Policy"; "Arts and Literature"; "Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention"; "African-American History and Culture"; "Women's History"; and "Miscellany." Each theme contains a roughly 250-word essay with links to digital reproductions of selected documents. A detailed description (200 words) accompanies each document, and additional information about the collections from which a document came is available through links to the collection records and finding aids. The exhibit also includes roughly 25 images, primarily in the "Science, Medicine, Exploration and Invention" category. There is a special presentation entitled "Collecting, Preserving, and Researching History: A Peek into the Library of Congress Manuscript Division." This site provides a description of the division, its holdings, definitions of terms like "personal papers" and why they are important, how the Library of Congress acquires manuscripts, how the staff prepares, conserves, and stores them, and who uses the documents. The site also has links to the Library of Congress's ordering and reproduction policies, the American Memory site, and to the Library of Congress collection catalogs. This easily navigable site is keyword and subject searchable. This site is ideal for conducting research in many areas of American History, as well as answering the question: "What do archives do?"
WHEN Commodore Vanderbilt began the world he had nothing, and there were no steamboats or railroads. He was thirty-five years old when the first locomotive was put into use in America. When he died, railroads had become the greatest force in modern industry, and Vanderbilt was the richest man in Europe or America, and the largest owner of railroads in the world
