SPACE EXPLORATION

Today in the Bullis Room, we were thinking about forty-five years ago,  on July 21, 1969,  when Neil Armstrong became the first man to put his feet on the moon.

Nettie Bullis was 76 years old at the time.  For most of her lifetime,  "space exploration" referred to the land out west. Six states were explored and officially became part of the United States during Nettie's lifetime: Utah, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alabama, and Hawaii. The idea that the space to be explored was "out there in the heavens" was new to many of us who remember that time.

Whether the space is out west, around the world, or simply "out there," the Bullis collection has some interesting books about those places. In fact, there are LOTS of books on getting acquainted with this planet we live on. There is only one book that covers the  moon that Neil Armstrong walked on, and we think it's a very special book:

The Orbs Around Us: 

A Series of Familiar Essays on the Moon and Planets,

Meteors and Comets, the Sun and coloured pairs of suns.

By Richard A. Proctor, published by Green and Co. London, 1872

So again, we extend to you a special invitation to stop by the Bullis Room and let us show you (and show off!) these great classic books.

RAILROADS, THEN (1869) AND NOW (2010)

On May 10, 1869, the first transcontinental railroad in the United States was completed with a golden spike driven in Promontory, Utah. Dreams, planning, dedication and hard work accomplished this event. One book in the Bullis Collection that was published by the United States War Department between 1855 and 1861 tells of the beginnings of this monumental project. It's spine title is: Report of explorations and surveys for economical route for a railroad. The full title reads:

Reports of explorations and surveys to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean / made under the direction of the Secretary of War, in 1853-5, according to acts of Congress of March 3, 1853, May 31, 1854, and August 5, 1854.

This book is available online (and in the Bullis Room, of course) and we recommend it to you for your reading list, as it gives a greater appreciation of the Utah event and of railroads in general.

And speaking of appreciating railroads, the engineers in the Bullis family in 1869 would have been interested in the news from Promontory, Utah because it fulfilled the hopes inherent in their library book. Today, they would be equally interested in this country's talk of high speed rail as well as a local county rail line that was officially opened this week on May 10, exactly 141 years after the driving of the Golden Spike.